random musings on our hobby / area of interest, the aircooled volkswagen and it's place in social history.

i was reading the early 70's book i picked up yeaterday about vw's and it furthered some ideas / thoughts that i have had for a little while.

basically, what is must have been like for people back in the day driving and modifying vw's (aka the 60's and early 70's... even back into the 50's for some)

i look at these cars and see a beetle, there have always been beetles as long as i have been alive, you could still buy them new in australia when i was born. there were dealerships everywhere and well vw's everywhere. my mother is the only one on her side of the family that never had one. i remember traveling in "the purple people eater" a friends mums purple late model type 3 fastback, when it was still a fairly new car. but still to me (and basically everyone else i'd imagine) they are now an old car. an oval (aka my first car) is now over 50 years old. that is a really old car. even in the late 60's early 70's an oval was an old car, but you could still buy new parts form them form a vw dealership. i'd love to see the reaction that you would get if you took one in for a service at 95% of the vw dealerships now. 

i think what i'm trying to get to is, what must it have been like to be owning, driving and modifying them when they were a new car. buying a new beetle is 67, driving it home and fitting a twim carb kit, or building a dual port motor for it in the early 70's, say 71, it was a 4 year old car. how old is the car you drive every day? i know mine is a lot older than 4 years, i have tried to think of parallels in modern terms to explain what i'm getting at but there is nothing to compare to it, nothing even close. i have heard that the vw engine is the second most modified in the world after the small block chev and the beetle is the most modified car ever. have a go but i can't think of anything that can be even vaugly compared to it with regards to being cheap dependabe transport, it's versitility, ability to go fast at the drag strip, as an off road machine, in hot / cold. mud / sand / snow. haul huge loads, to do basically anything that was asked of it (provided you were willing to throw some cash at it in some cases) on basically every continent etc. i ask a lot of people if they know of any vw's most don't, but a fair few of those will still tell stories of the vw they owned or thier parents owned etc. generally fond ones. now they are a dissapearing site on the roads but they still inhabit our conciousness. 

our experience is so varied compared to each other in the global vw thing. compare the amount of rust work needed on your average uk car compared to a californian one. the cost of parts in the us vs europe vs australia vs NZ etc. i was stunned with the amount of $ invested in the cars in germany when i was there in 2001. completely stunned. over here you can still sort of do it on a shoestring budget. i'd imagine you could do so in some parts of the us as well, but not in germany and parts of asia. $$$$$$$$$

i wonder when the "golden age" for vw's was in australia? when it was the cheapest and easiest? the 60's? the 70"s? 80's? 90's? now? the information is easyto get now but you can't go out and pick up a good parts car every month for less than $300. you don't see a beetle every time you leave the house now.

back to the original thought. owning and modifying vw's back in the early days. whether it was to stand out from every other beetle on the block or to surprise the guy round the corner with his new EK holden. so you could tow your caravan up hills a little easier. yes remember quite a few beetles had tow bars and were used to tow stuff. maybe it was your weekend warrior rally car. perhaps it had a stock motor but you had done some custom body work to make it yours... or given it a metal flake paint job (or house paint flowers / rainbows / trees etc. i have seen a few with psyc/hippieesque additions over the years) 

it was a different time, the people thought differently. in 1959 if you were my age or a little older you could have fought the germans in thier kubels in north africa during ww2. these were a foreign car, even if build/assembled in victoria, a foreign car back when the world was still a big place, tv was only 3 years old in nsw and vic (it wouldn't come to the NT for 12 years.. 1971) and most people didn't have one, shops had roll down shades on the awnings to protect the produce from the sun. lots of men still wore hats etc. even if you lived in the suburbs you could well have had a water tank. you bought your beetle with pounds shillings and pence and you could have optioned it with traficator replacements ( aka elephant ears not semaphores) basically every service station had a service department and driveway service, there was no late night or sunday trading. etc if you added a monaro motors kit and a lukey exhaust to your big window beetle, a: you would void the warrenty and b: it would be a seriously hot vw and probably fairly brisk for a family car. hell, a beetle could be a family car and people wouldn't freak out about the lack of leg room of seatbelts / abs / airbags or aircon / dvd's / satnav etc. 100 miles an hour was FAST.

it does make me wonder a bit.