Hey gang. Been a long time since I've posted, but I had to share this story. My wife and I found a $200 5/73 Super Beetle. It looked pretty decent except it was hit really hard in the side. It has just over 86,000 original miles and was a running driver at the time it was hit. It was parked in a shed and then a tornado came and lifted the house, machine shed, and trees and threw them 2 miles away. The beetle just stayed behind as if nothing had happened. There is typical Nebraska rust, but for $200, I figured the engine (it's a runner) is worth at least that! :)
Now my wife suggested we flat tow it back home and I'm not a big advocate of that, but you gotta do what you gotta do. We flat-towed a beetle from Kansas City back home last October so I figured this 40+ mile run was nothing compared to the 200 miler we did. We towed with a 1999 Ford Contour with a 4 cylinder engine. As long as you turn the overdrive off, it goes quite well. We drove to Hartington, NE to attend the Firehouse rock concert yesterday and so today on the way back, in 100 degree heat, we drove to the farm that held the beetle. One tire was off the bead, but my wife helped me put a strap around the tire after I removed it and we hit it with air from the air bubble and we beheld a minor miracle as the tire took air with little effort! It took almost all 35 psi to get it to snap into place on the rim, but it held. We did have to drive 10 miles one way to buy longer bolts so I could get the adapter plate bolted up underneath to hook the towbar to, but hey - 90! minutes later, we managed to get it 45 miles back home via gravel and black-top road in the heat. Now here is the weird thing about the beetle. I was underneath the front, mounting the adapter plate, and I thought - gee this is 71/72 Super Beetle suspension under here. I know because it's a solid cast lower arm and not the little double I-beam of stamped metal like my 74 has. The bumpers have the solid brackets like the 71 and 72 Super Beetles have (not the energy-absorbing ones). What makes this weird though is that even though everything underneath is 71/72 Super Beetle, it has the curved windshield and larger dash. Now that is weird for sure. Since the date code on the door jamb is 5/73, that would mean they put a new body on an old pan. The only thing I didn't check is if someone took a later model super and mounted it on an earlier pan. The car has been repainted orange, but it was orange over orange but the story goes that it was a 1-owner car before the kid had it for 2 weeks and got t-boned. Anyway, I believe the seats are 71/72 style as well. So it's m! y guess, that maybe the factory ran out of 71/72 bodies, but still had existing rolling pans to use up before the changeover so they just bolted it on and kept rolling them. Technically, this would have a been a 1972 Model year beetle, but with the curved windshield, it really is a bastard Super Beetle. Has anyone ever run across anything like this before? NQ _______________________________________________ vintagvw site list [email protected] http://lists.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/vintagvw
