Although Wayne Dean spent his career dedicated to Honda, his hobby cars offered him an automotive diversion. Dean was 18 in 1974 when he bought a new Honda Civic from Dalt’s Honda in Toronto. More than just the Civic, he got a job at the dealership and worked there until 2017.
“I started off as a lot boy, and moved my way up to fixed operations manager,” Dean says, who still lives in the Toronto area. He bought his first hobby car from the dealership when a customer traded in a 1971 Fiat Spyder. For $300, Dean bought the Spyder and drove it home where he repaired the rusted floors and the metal surrounding the headlights.
“I got it painted at the dealership and drove it for a couple of years,” he says, and adds, “I later sold it for $6,000.”
In 1995, Toronto-area resident Wayne Dean was shopping for a VW Beetle when he found this 1975 Super Beetle for sale at a Honda dealership in Burnaby, B.C. CREDIT: Wayne Dean Photo by Wayne Dean
After the Fiat, Dean’s interest turned to air-cooled Volkswagens in 1995 when he encountered a young enthusiast driving a modified Beetle. Dean stopped and chatted and learned of a VW event happening the next day in Cambridge.
“We went as a family and there was a sea of Beetles, Buses, dune buggies, Karmann Ghias, Type 3s and Type 4s,” Dean recalls. “I’d been aware of VWs all my life but didn’t realize there were so many different models. That really led me towards the brand.”
Looking for a Beetle, Dean kept his eye on what was then the print edition of the Auto Trader.
“I think I looked at everything that was for sale in this area,” Dean says. “I’d go and look, and while I found a couple that were close to what I wanted, I didn’t buy one.”
What Dean wanted was a complete, well-maintained or restored Beetle he could drive immediately. He didn’t find one until on vacation in British Columbia. Always curious about other Honda dealerships, he drove by the Honda facility in Burnaby.
“There was a beautiful gold Beetle sitting behind the fence on the Honda lot,” he says. “It had been traded in and I was handed the keys for a test drive. I was crawling all over the Beetle and it looked like it had just come off the showroom floor. Among all of the books and parts that were up front, I found the name and number of the previous owner.”
Wayne Dean’s 1975 VW Super Beetle, a car he bought in 1995, prompted him to build Volkswagen dedicated websites some 23 years ago. Photo by Wayne Dean
SuperBeetles.com and AllAirCooled.com, are still going strong. Photo by Wayne Dean
Fuel injection was added to VW’s 1600cc air-cooled engine for 1975. Badging on the decklid noted the change, with Fuel Injected replacing the Volkswagen script to the upper left of the licence plate. Photo by Wayne Dean
Introduced in 1971, VW’s Super Beetle was a larger, more comfortable compact car than the original Beetle. Photo by Wayne Dean
Dean called and learned the Beetle had been restored. Satisfied he’d found a good VW, he bought the car, put it on a train, and had it delivered to Ontario. The car Dean bought was a 1975 Super Beetle – it was a special edition La Grande Bug. The La Grande Bug package gave the car a manual sunroof, corduroy seat inserts and a rosewood dash.
“This was early in the days of the Internet, and there wasn’t much Super Beetle information online,” Dean says. “But I did start talking to a guy who had a site called Super Beetles Only.”
By the late 1990s, that site had moved to a forum format. Dean decided he’d create his own site dedicated to Super Beetles featuring owners and their cars. For Dalt’s Honda, Dean had taken web design classes and built a site for the dealership. Putting his new-found web skills to use, in 2000, he built SuperBeetles.com. Not wanting to neglect all other VW models, he followed that up with AllAirCooled.com.
“People would take their own photos, write their own story, and I’d post two or three cars a week,” Dean says of the early days of the sites.
By the latter part of the decade, he’d posted hundreds of Volkswagen stories. But when enthusiasts began flocking to Facebook and Instagram for their VW fix, Dean lost some of his momentum.
“I was feeling a bit discouraged as I was having trouble getting stories, and after owning my Super Beetle for 14 years, in 2009 I decided to sell it,” he says.
Dean bought a different hobby car but says if he had a ‘Jay Leno-sized garage,’ he would never have sold the Super Beetle. And, although he might have been discouraged, he never gave up on his VW websites. When Dean retired from the Honda dealership in 2017, he found Beetle enthusiasts were once again more interested in seeing their car featured on a website, rather than just posted to Facebook where it would quickly fade from top billing. He again has a steady stream of fresh VW stories to post online.
Dean concludes, “There’s an enduring love for VW Beetles, and VWs in general, because I think they take us back to a simpler time.”
Greg Williams is a member of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC). Have a column tip? Contact him at 403-287-1067 or [email protected]
Keyword: On the Road: An enduring love of the humble Beetle