The continuing allure of VW’s simple flat-four is celebrated in an exhibition at California’s Grand National Roadster Show.
There was a time—after peak-hot rod and peak-muscle car but before the rise of The Import Scene—when the humble Volkswagen Beetle was the coolest car anyone had. Maybe you went to high school then. Maybe you had a Volkswagen Beetle yourself, and maybe you spent your entire McDonald’s paycheck on a pair of EMPI D Series carburetors, 45mm big. Or maybe the D Series wasn’t out then. Things get fuzzy after all these years.
After the OPEC oil embargo killed muscle cars and long after ‘32 Ford roadsters were easily available—and well before the Honda Civic became the tuner car of choice of another generation—the Beetle was both ubiquitous and cheap and everyone had one.
“It was a party,” said Marc Meadors, who now runs the Good Guys Rod & Custom Association but back then ran an event in the Bay Area called Bug Bash and another one called VWs by the Bay. “We would get 1000 Volkswagens. We had the bikini contest, we did a ‘VW Engine Blow’ where you drained the oil out of a flat-four and people would guess how long it would last before it blows up at wide open throttle. We had a big swap meet—it was just a good time, back in the days before social media and all the current affairs we’re in now.”
“The mid-80s to the early ‘90s was like heaven,” said Rich Crafton, co-publisher of the reborn VW Trends magazine. “You could buy an old junked-out VW for maybe 500 to 1000 bucks. And then if you had the knowhow for it—or if you didn’t, you have a friend that did—they could help you rebuild the thing from the wheels up. And it would be your signature on that Bug.”
Just looking at this tableful of EMPI parts makes you want to build your own Bug, doesn’t it?
Mark Vaughn
Just like the hot rods before them and the imports after, the Beetle became the canvas on which a generation painted its dreams.
“People, they kind of imprint on some sort of a vehicle in their youth, they aspire to it, they dream about it, they lust after it,” said Rob Mullner, VP of marketing for VW aftermarket parts company EMPI. “And for a lot of people in this barn (Hall 9 of the Grand National Roadster Show), it was the flat-four, it was some sort of Volkswagen vehicle. There are 1000 canvases in a museum, right? They’re all different. They’re not all the same. We could look around here and pick five vehicles and look at five different build characteristics, five different goals, five different dreams.”
At its heart was an engine that just about anyone with a screwdriver could fix.
“It’s not computerized. They’re simple. And there is no radiator,” said Scott Jones, who was showing the Jones family Manx at GNRS. “That’s a big deal. It never gives you an error code, it never gives me any trouble. And it makes 146 horsepower on the ground in a car that weighs 1500 pounds.”
The Beetle became the canvas on which a generation painted its dreams.
Jones said his goal in building the car was to do wheelies across the intersection, a goal he has reached with the dual-carb setup he has on board.
“Affordability,” said Meadors. “They were easy to work on—parts galore—you could lower it, put on your own wheels, tires, brakes. You had the Cal look, which was a certain look of the Volkswagen. Just an abundance of parts and suppliers, and affordability was the key.”
As common as they once were, you may have trouble finding a good donor car for your VW dream now.
“Today, it’s getting so that the prices for the body are just skyrocketing, so crazy,” said Shiro Watanabe, who edited a Volkswagen magazine in his native Japan for 20 years before purchasing Dune Buggies and Hot VWs magazine in 2017. “It’s changing. Every industry is always changing. But still, it’s fun to drive, you know? And it’s so much easier than the water-cooled cars to restore, because its engine’s air-cooled. Even after sitting for 20 or 30 years, you can get the motor to start. And still, here in California, there are still many aftermarket companies doing pretty well, like EMPI. I can count more than 10 companies here and they’re all doing well. They produce almost everything so that you can build an entire car, actually. So that keeps many Volkswagens alive.”
Jeff and Joe Kugel pose with the family Beetle, bought by their grandfather and imported in 1969. Kugel Komponents makes speed parts for hot rods, but it turns out everyone has a Volkswagen story.
Mark Vaughn
For many, the draw is nostalgia. Many attendees at the Roadster Show’s Hall 9 recall those early days fondly.
“I went to Bug-Ins when I was a kid at OCIR (Orange County International Raceway, long since gone),” said EMPI’s Mullner. “As a kid it was the biggest carnival I’d ever been to. It was like the Goodwood Festival of Speed for Volkswagen guys. What I remember very clearly about the scene was that somebody would build a really cool, early Cal-look car, a car they drove to work, and then they were going to take it to the drags. So they tuned up the motor, jetted the carbs or just replaced the carbs, put a stinger on it, taped cardboard to the front, hooked up the same tow bar that we sell today, put it on their truck, take it to OCIR, and then drag the hell out of it for the weekend. And then reverse the process, unjet it or detune it, and then drive it to work on Monday. And that whole idea was, ‘Oh my God, that could be a race car!’ And then there were, of course, young ladies in halter tops and things that were, you know, for an impressionable young mind, pretty noteworthy. But I just remember thinking that everybody was getting along. Everybody was having a good time.”
“Well, if you remember the ‘80s, it was pretty much anything goes,” said VW Trends’ Crafton. “You’d have these shows like Big Al’s Big Show in Costa Mesa at the OC Fairgrounds, or Rich Campbell’s Classic Show at Irvine Meadows back when it was going on. They were just jam-packed with some of the most beautiful cars. You had everything from the Cal look through anything-goes custom classics, stock, or whatever you can think of—dune buggies, off-road, the whole nine yards. It was just a party all weekend.”
And while the Beetle scene started in Southern California, it went global.
“Southern California was most definitely the hub,” said Crafton. “But it was completely national, if not worldwide. We restarted the magazine (VW Trends) last year in March. And we have subscribers in Belgium, Japan, UK, Brazil, Mexico, Germany, all over the world—Canada, of course—and we’re getting more every day.”
“We’re going to be at European Bug-In in July,” said EMPI’s Mullner. “That is the biggest Volkswagen event in the world. And, there are three cars at this very show here in Pomona that are all the way from Scotland. Scotland! Are you kidding? So yeah, the scene has only grown and I think we can blame the internet. We can blame social media, but we could probably blame the EMPI catalog as kind of spreading this all over the world.”
And it all comes down to the experience. Marty Salerno and Lance McDonald campaign a naturally aspirated 1963 Karmann Ghia Type 34 Sport Coupe in drag races all across the country. Their best quarter-mile run is a 10.56 at 128 mph at the Route 66 Raceway in Joliet.
“It’s like going to Disney World on one of the old Disney World E-ticket rides,” said Salerno, who does the driving after McDonald has done the setup. “When I’m dumping the clutch at 8000 rpm in this car and shifting it at 8500, it pushes you back in the seat and the car goes straight it’s… it’s worth all the hours of prepping the car to go off down that drag strip.”
Keyword: The Volkswagen Beetle Was Once the Coolest Car You Could Own