It’s kinda like a job…

A couple of months ago, me and my biker friend were driving around, running errands or something and saw a VW bug for sale – we had to stop to look at it.  We had looked at several – most of them in poor shape and too expensive.  My friend has an eye for them, and he looked at this one:

And bought it. 

It’s a 1964 bug, two years younger than I am.  I personally have never much cared about VW’s, but A got a good price on it and has been holding onto it and making some small repairs on it, waiting for someone to come along who has to have it.

Now, the story we heard was that the seller found it in California, where it had been a movie prop car.  It’s a believable story, because this car does not have 47 years of use on it – it looks, in fact, to be nearly new, and I’m willing to bet that it’s 59,000 miles are all it has on it – it doesn’t look like it’s gone over a hundred thousand miles and turned the odometer over.

It has the original 6 volt system in it – someone put 12 volt bulbs in the light sockets, and once those were changed out for the correct lights, it is as brightly lit as it should be.  It is almost completely "original" – with the exception of parts that age, like the brake pads and seals in the brake system, it is Original.  It has a sunroof on it too – a factory sunroof, that adds to the value of it.

Not my style of interior, but look at it-

It is CLEAN inside – very little wear on the carpet – which may have been replaced, but with VW stuff.  We think it’s been "redone" inside, because it doesn’t have 47 years of sun wear on the interior – but it was stored, inside, for most of it’s life, and there’s a decent chance it is all original.

As it happens, this weekend, there is a "Volkswagen swapmeet" going on at Portland International Raceway – up by the airport.  It is also going to be the warmest weather we’ve had in 220 days – over 80 degrees and CLEAR – a perfect day for an old car show.

It’s been my job to take pictures of the car – I’m putting together an ad on Samba.com for my friend, but we’re going to wait on that because there’s a chance he’ll sell the car at the show, and an ad woud be bogus then.  Bogus as in unneeded.

That radio in the dashboard is the orginal AM 6 volt radio – a friend of A’s looked it up on eBay, and the radio, by itself, is worth over two bills, they are that rare.  The car has been tuned recently, and all it really needs is a new carburator – not desperately needs, but the shafts of the throttle plate are worn, and it could run that much better than it does now, which is pretty good.

I grew up with my dad’s Porsche 356B, and I know what a solid 4 cylinder horizinally opposed motor sounds like – this one has very good compression and runs like it”s almost new.

With a paint job and some trim here and there, it is a show car for sure, and we’re hoping that he’ll drive it up to the show and ride home in my car.

Hell, it looks better at 47 than I did, lol

*****