Where did it start?

I've seen this in other threads but not here, the question is Where did it start? When did you get involved with VW's was it your dads, or was it a neighbor down the street? Im sure there is some intresting story's ou there so lets here em!!!!..


For me, it was when I was about 12 or 13, my dad had a mechanic shop, working on mostly GM cars, but next door to him there was a VW shop. Corks foreign car repair.. out of Ft. lauderdale Fl. he did mostly all vw's so between running back and forth between my dads and corks place, is when I got the "bug" these neat cars that had no simalarity at all to what I was acoustom too.. then when I turned 15, good ole cork asked my dad if he wanted this car he had, it was a 72 squareback red with black interior, at first my dad said no, but after I begged him for it he finnaly took possetion of the 72!! well i was only 15 i had no drivers licence so my dad would let me drive it after school around his wharehouse development, alot of shops and not alot of traffic it was a way to learn how to drive.. well finnaly after about 2 months the motor locked up on it and my dad did not want to spend the money to have a motor rebuilt so he sold the car for like 200 bucks, promising me another VW if thats what i wanted, well im 33 now and i finally got my other VW.. long awaited so once again I have the "bug"..

As with all of the good things in my life I owe all the credit to my wife. When we first got married 14yrs ago, she had 2 vehicles she always wanted. A '65 Mustang and an old beetle. I already had my car, the '39 chevy my father gave me when I was 12 yrs old, so we started looking for a bug and/or stang. It didn't take long and a guy stopped by my uncle's garage asking if the '87 dodge mini panel van out front was for sale. It was my first vehicle that had a bad tranny so my uncle had the guy contact me. Low and behold he had a '65 VW that he wanted to part with cause he couldn't get the brakes to work, he had just had $700 worth of work done to the engine but couldn't get brakes and was frustrated with it. We had been trying to sell the van for $1000 so the guy offered $500 and the VW. SOLD!! I was only 20 at the time.

My dad, Wife and I went out into the country to this guys house and found the bug sitting next to a barn where it had been for about a year. We cleaned the carb, put some clean gas in it, the 6v bat from my '39 and the bug fired right up. I drove it the 30 miles home using the e-brake to stop when needed. My neighbor growing up was an old school VW mechanic and he told me how to adjust the brakes up all the way and back down slightly and bleed them, after 45 min of this the bug had brakes and my wife was driving it the next day.

Turned out that the old bug had a lot of rust under it so we drove it for a couple years and parked it, I've slowly been selling parts and stripping parts off of it for a few years now and putting what I could onto the '65 I picked up a couple years ago for $800.

Oh yeah, My wife does have the '65 stang in the garage also, it runs and drives nice but needs the body work finished which I will have to do this summer before starting any more VW projects.

I got out of the US Navy in 1964. I married my high school sweet heart. Her father decided we needed a sensible car. He gave us a 1959 VW bug that he purchased new. It was black with red interior. It was mint because he babied it. If he wasn't tuning it he was waxing it. He wanted a new Ford product just out on the market a 1964 Mustang. The Ford dealer offered little or nothing trade-in wise. I hated the little bug at first but eventually I fell in love with it.

Fast forward to 1980 or '81. I saw a cal look bug in a car magazine in the grocery store. The article on the car said: "The last affordable hot rod."

By fate or chance, the very next day a guy who owed me money offered a 1969 std. VW bug in lieu of the money he owed me. The '69 had a brand new 1835 with dual delorto's. It just needed some paint and body work and an interior. Also at the time in California the hot ticket was one piece windows. I believe I had the first set in GA. I also had Ghia disc brakes up front and 914 disc brakes on the rear with home made brackets. I had a close ratio transaxle built. 240 SX bucket seats. A zebra wood dash with all VDO gauges. A kick ass stereo. Sway bars front and rear. The front was lowered and the rear. The lowering was done by "Po-Volks" in Tucker, GA (PO-Volks later became "North Lake Service") Kenny Bogus was the owner. They did great work and reasonable.

That said...I've heard some people on this forum bad mouth him. Maybe over the years he's changed but he always treated me fair and he knew VW's better than anyone else in the Atlanta area.

I discovered vw magazines (VW Trends and Hot VW's) and the fever was born. Two or three years later I entered a bug show in McDonough, Ga and took two trophies. "Best Street Sedan" and second best of show.

I was hooked. In the next five years I owned a stock '56 oval...a stock '63 single cab...a stock '64 notch back...a stock thing..and several other VW's. I had nine in all. The wife said enough is enough. I sold them all. I got back into Chevys my first love.

My biggest VW mistake was passing up a 23 widow bus that was flawless...save a blown motor for $1300.00. I kick myself every time I think about it. I guess my best excuse is that they just weren't popular anywhere but on the west coast. They were slugs in traffic...they were big...etc...

The parents owned a 60 Rag when I was born, vauge memories about that one, but have some vivid ones like hurling out the window comming down the mountain when a wee lad. Fast forward 16 years, have had a few cars and always get a clunker, they all end up in a junkyard. So Kill my car go looking for a new one, had almost $2000 saved up and see a 71 Super beetle for sale for $600. Go check it out and buy it. The thing had 375000 miles on it! I could not believe it!! But it ran and was in decent shape so I bought it. A girl that lived up the street from me always had VW's so I stopped by and showed it to her, turns out her dad had a VW shop in town so I went by to talk with them about it. It had a built engine in it and they quoted $900 for a new engine, and about $300 on the other work it needed. So I said that sounds good, have the cash so I am going to have some fun with this thing.
Well got a friend to follow me with his rollback and took it down a pretty straight run to a town south of us about 30 miles away. My intent was to run it full out and blow the motor and have it towed back and put a new one in it for peace of mind and a little fun. Well It pegged the speedo and never let go, could not kill it! Only problem was it had a full flow w/external oil filter and the header got so hot it burned a hole in the oil filter. Well man, looks like the engine is good will just get an oil change and new filter and will bank the money until needed. Went to a few oil change places and explained the situation, they all laughed and told me VW's did not have filters???? Once I showed them, they all shook their heads and said thats not supposed to be their and would not touch it. So took it back to the girls dads shop and he told me why it had a filter, and it really did not need it so replaced it with a stock pump. I delivered pizzas in the car for about 5 years and ended up selling it with almost 500k on it to a friend and bought a 61 to replace it! That car really impressed me, so swore off all others and here 170+ VW's later its all that will grace my driveway.

On a side note to the 71 my friend drove it for over a year, the oil light quit working and he ended up throwing a rod in it. Filled it full of oil and drove it 30 miles home from work. We lived in Apts attached to a bar so when he bought a new engine for it we went into the bar and used 4 stools and bought some of the regulars a few beers to lift the car up once the engine was removed and sat it on the stools! rolled the engine out and the new one under and they sat it back down and we put it back in. Ended up we both have a severe addiction now!!

As alot of people I was into Chevys growing up. Started out drag racing then to dirt ovel for about 20 years. In 2000 a friend bought a rail knock down kit and ask me to help put it together and big bro to paint it. When we finished I drove it around and decided that I wanted one. So the race cars was sold and bugs started coming in. I built me a rail then started on a 73 super my daly driver now.

I think that it is in my blood.

My mother was born and raised in Helmstedt (about 25 miles from Wolfsburg) and my father was stationed there from '59-'61. For their honeymoon they borrowed a friend's oval and toured the Alps. My dad was pretty impressed with how the little car handled the mountains and owned a couple of Beetles in the '60's after returning to the states.

A growing family brought a temporary end to VW ownership until my mom decided that she had had enough of big american station wagons and bought the first GTI to hit the local dealer's lot. What an exciting change from the station wagons! Not long after, on Easter sunday in '85, my father brought home the Thing, just the ticket for a car crazy teenager. From there, I have owned and driven a bunch of watercooled and a couple of aircooled.

Unfortunately, my dad passed a while back, but I still have the Thing and hopefully will be cruising around with my son this coming spring.

I crashed my grandfather's 68 when I was 2 and bought my first one 8 months ago. Virgin.

It started when I was a kid. Dad had several VWs when I was growing up. Most of which I was too young to remember. The one that was the most memorable was '65 split kombi. He bought it from a dry cleaners. It was two tone white and red (which had oxidized to a purpleish). My parents were split and I lived in LA with mom. Dad lived in Las Vegas. Every summer my brother and I would ride in that bus from LA to Vegas and back for visits. There were no seats in the back and I would often sleep on the engine shelf in the back while we rode through the desert. That is where the seed was planted. Dad went on to own one more VW after that. It was a bay westy and I'm not sure of its vintage. He had that until the late 80's when he moved to ATL.

My brother's first car was a sun bug. He drove it in high school and, consequently, hauled his little borther (me) around in it quite often. I remember the passenger seat used to rock fore and aft when he would shift gears until, one day, he whipped around a corner and the seat came off the track. I ended in up the back seat of the car while still sitting in the front seat. I saw him do plenty of work to that car including fill the front with 2x4s to hold his apron and front fenders after he hit a Cadillac and pushed the metal back to the gas tank.

I always wanted a bug but never was able to own one until the late '90s when I bought my '68 beetle. I paid $1300 dollars for it and drove it 1/2 way home on 3 cylinders. I drove that car for almost ten years as a daily driver including 2 1/2 years delivering pizzas to make ends meet. It never let me down.

A year or so ago, my brother came to Atlanta to go on a road trip with myself and dad to D.C. My brother and I spent many hours on that trip talking VWs. Two days after the trip was over, dad said he'd been bitten by the bug again. A couple weeks later he bought a Super Beetle.

It's in the blood.

Mine started with my Brother-inlaw. He wreched a Green 73 Super. He fell asleep at the wheel and rolled it. He found another the same color which had damaged fenders and door on the oposite side than the one he rolled had. We took the parts off the wreched one and repaired his everyday driver. He let me drive the car everyday for about six months after he bought a Bandit Edition TA. My father almost bought it from him for my first car but the brother-inlaw sold it before my dad could talk to him. It was a lot of fun to drive but that really wasn't what got me interested in them. Fast forward 5 years and after High School the Cal-Look scene started big here. I saw how cool you could make these cars and even take them off road. WOW

My first bug was a 68 Baja, $250 purchase in '83. Saw it sitting next to a house in Jonesboro. Dual port, big tires the usual. Not long after that a coworker who was into bugs found a 67 at a house in Jonesboro, thinking that it would cost a good bit(complete car) I purchased it for $40 dollars. Yeah, got it home worked with it and it ran. We did too there was a Wasp nest in the muffler. I wish I still had that car, powder blue, popouts, overider bumpers very nice complete car. I got married in '86 needed money for my first house in '88 and sold all my bug stuff and never looked back. I divorced in '96 and in 2001 purchased the car I have now, 1966 bug. I think this one is about my 8th or 9th one. Thats really not many compared to some volks. I forgot how much fun these little cars were to drive.
And the looks!

My girlfriend at the time(wife now) just didn't see what I saw in these cars. After somewhat finishing mine and attending the Bug Jam with me this year she has the fever! A Splitty Bus or Double Cab. I always liked putting models together as a kid and now they are just a tad bit bigger.

One aspect of this hobby that I never really concidered is the Human aspect. I have to thank fluxcap(Eric) for directing me to this site. I have you folks to share my story with, after all you guys are the only ones that will understand!
Peace out!