When I was first getting into cars and Volkswagens specifically, I had a partner in crime: my younger brother Chris. In those early days, Chris and I would spend untold hours studying the VW magazines, wrenching on our respective VWs, and trying to find any morsel of VW knowledge that we could. I guess to most it was an obsession, but we had a great time doing it.
As we ventured into adulthood, things don't always work out the way we hope. When Chris moved to Colorado around 1999, he left his last aircooled VW in safe hands: the 1970 EMPI Imp dunebuggy that I still own. He kind of dipped his little toe into the aircooled scene with the acquisition of his 1972 Porsche 914 in about 2005-2006. Kind of a VW but not quite.
I've been doing my not-so-subtle methods of persuasion on Chris to convince him to jump back into the hobby. We've gone to VW shops during our visits to California. I've shared cool stuff with him on social media and email. I wasn't going to give up. Well it seems as my efforts weren't fruitless..
Yesterday Chris bought and took delivery of this beauty: a 1967 Bug!!
So what was I going to do now that Chris has another Bug? I drove down to Fort Collins and gave him a hand with cleaning up the car and assessing it. We looked it over with a fine tooth comb, looking for anything of note, anything that will need to be fixed later, and what it will take to get her drive-able. We also made sure to photo-document it with a bunch of photos along the way.
What did we find? Mechanically the Bug is in good shape. The stock 1600cc engine starts right up and sounds strong. We found a receipt from a Denver area VW shop for the rebuilt transmission. The suspension features dropped front spindles and disc brakes at all four corners. Yes, she is equipped with four wheel disc brakes!! She doesn't look like much, but with the running gear all in top shape, this will be relatively easy to get roadworthy.
The work for this car is going to be cosmetically. The body does feature some surface rust, it is missing the rear bumper (which is a rare '67 only part), front seats (another '67 only items), and a few fenders are going to need to be replaced.
What is it going to take to make it road worthy? Well the obvious registration and insurance, it does need at least one new tire (the tire has a huge hole in the side and the spare was probably made back in the 80s). Looking forward to seeing Chris behind the wheel of a Bug again!
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