Monday, November 26, 2007
A tribute to the humble Volkswagen
Ray Stubblefield
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From the RoundTable blog
I was talking the other day with a longtime friend, and somehow the conversation got around to cars. I don’t recall exactly how we got there, but we ended up talking about our first cars. Mine was a 1965 VW Beetle, and his a 1969 Chevy Nova.
It was not like these were our dream cars or anything. We were young, poor and needed cheap transportation. For years before this (during my high school and college years) I rode my 10-speed bike most places, hitched or bummed a ride from friends. Cars to me are just a necessary evil. If I could live where there are no cars, I would love it. But that is a topic for another day.
I bought my Beetle in 1977 and paid $500 for it, probably too much considering I had to rebuild the engine six months later. With a little help from a friend, I rebuilt the engine myself. Quite a feat, considering I had never worked on a car before. He had just done his VW engine a few months before, using “The Complete Idiots Guide to VW Repair,” by John Muir. OK, all you aging hippies out there, please tell me you remember.
This is the original Complete Idiot’s Guide that all others try to emulate, and is the ultimate how-to manual. Besides his wit, humor and Zen-like approach to car repair, the author has a true genius for teaching.
I was so successful with my engine, I did three more after that for friends. The only thing was, it was in the dead of winter in my parents’ unheated garage. Working in heavy overalls, always having cracked greasy hands, and fingers numb and cold all the time, is it any wonder that I ended up hating to work on cars of any kind?
Anyone who has ever owned a Beetle knows how special they are. Remember all the Disney movies featuring Herbie the Love Bug? They still have cult status worldwide. Quirky, ugly, indestructible. One quirk was that the battery went under the back seat, and over time acid would leak and rust out the floor.
When I first got my Beetle, I had ice in the back floorboard for most of the winter. Every time I went through a large puddle, water pooled in the back and stayed. When it turned cold, it froze. My friends eventually got used to it, but first-time passengers were always shocked to find a miniature skating rink under their feet.
Of course heat in a VW was always a joke if it got really cold. And those little control levers on either side of the emergency brake? Who could figure those out? No matter what configuration you chose, it never made any difference.
Until I could afford a new one, I went weeks with a bad starter. Every time I needed a start, we would all jump out and push it off and pile back in while the car was still moving. We looked like a bunch of Keystone Kops.
Or if I was alone, I would just park it on a hill. Those were the days. But in the snow, until front-wheel drive came along, nothing could beat a VW. There is an old TV commercial I’ll never forget. It’s dark and snowing a blizzard. All you see are headlights moving through the pouring snow. After a bit a voice says, “Ever wonder how the guy who runs the snowplow gets to the snowplow?” Then the camera pulls back and shows a lone VW Beetle tooling along in the blizzard.
In about a 10-year period, I ended up owning a Beetle, a VW van with a smiley face painted on the front, and a VW pop-up camper van. Notoriously underpowered, hard to get parts for and not exactly crashworthy, my VW days eventually came to a close. But what a ride it was while it lasted. The VW was more than just a car, it was a lifestyle, one I’m glad I was a part of.
Stubblefield, who teaches Earth science at Franklin County High School,
is a Roanoke Times columnist.
