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Pat's 1954 Beetle

I rode in my first Volkswagen Beetle way back in 1956, I was 5 years old. A few years later my pop bought a '58 and we hated it. So no more VWs until I was 12 years old or so. My Pop and I built a Meyer's Manx dune buggy. It was the 11th fiberglass body that Bruce Meyer's had ever made and we had it for about 25 years.After that I moved to Hawaii and bought a '57 Bug for 300 bucks. What a deal! I slapped a 2110 in that baby with Berg heads and the first dual 48s to ever hit the street in Kona. I shut down almost everybody with that ride! Move forward about 30 years and here I am back in So Cal. I found a '57 Bug up in Oregon so Pop and I drove up and brought it back home.

That one turned out to be way too much work so we sold it and started searching around. I saw this sweet '54 Beetle for sale on Craigslist. I loved it at first sight. Pop and me drove up above San Francisco and trailered her back to Orange County CA.She had a good running 1500cc motor but I figured a bit more power would be needed to make this ride a bit more exciting. So I dug up my cash stash from the backyard and bought a brand spanking new 2276cc motor. This baby has a 120 cam, Mini Wedge port heads with 37 x 42 valves, match ported intake manifolds, dual 44 Webers with an external fan cooled oil cooler to keep the doghouse oil cooler company, oil filter and extra sump that holds 7 quarts of Castrol.

With all this good stuff I decided a street eliminator trans would be in order. I added a Select-a-Drop front end for that cool stance with 145s up front with 205s in the back. I put in a new interior, headliner, and carpets and it looks real nice. Even the original semaphores still work! When I save up some more loot I will most likely put on some disc brakes up front. And when I come into some even bigger bucks a nicer paint job will be in order.This year Santa checked his naughty and nice list and was still pretty good to me this Christmas as you can see from the photo above. In closing I would like to say that I have pretty much been a VW lover my whole life and would like to thank Ferdinand Porsche for the VW Beetle. Oh yeah ...I had a '66 Porsche 912 with dual Webers, now that was a very fun little ride!

Pat