On April 10, 1973 we purchased "The Blues," which at that time we could have called "The Yellows," but that didn't quite have a ring to it. We paid $3200 for the Texas yellow Super Beetle at our local Volkswagen dealer. I used the bug for work with the Arizona Lottery for years driving over 500 miles each week delivering lottery tickets within a 100-mile radius of Tucson, Arizona. I taught my son and daughter how to drive in the bug. My daughter had a memorable fender bender on some railroad tracks. The car that caused the accident sped off leaving her straddling the tracks. The front right fender was pushed into the tire, and she couldn't move. No one in the cars behind lifted a finger to help. She thought, "I can't leave the bug here." Yes…….and, as you may have gathered by now, a train was coming. She says to this day, "I don't know where I got the strength to wrench the fender away from the tire." She did and was able to pull off the tracks and that's just one of the many adventures our little bug has had over the past 31 years.

The car has covered over 300,000 miles and has the original engine, which has been overhauled twice by master VW mechanic Keith Ernst. He has done 98% of all the work that has been done on the bug and knows this v-dub quite intimately! You'll notice in the engine picture that it has AC -- much to the chagrin of Keith! Air conditioning is a must. After all, this is the Sonoran desert and temperatures can reach 114 degrees in the summer. It works quite well especially after the old cast iron compressor was replaced with one of the newer ones that doesn't pull the engine down as much. One summer I drove to Lincoln County, New Mexico and kept it a nice 75 degrees inside and did 70 to 75 MPH with great gas mileage, too.

About us | Contact | Events | Forum | History | Home | Images | Interactive | Links | Tech