Looking For a Beetle

I mentioned previously that one of my goals for this year is to fulfil my 25 year ambition to obtain an old VW Beetle to 'play' with. Well I'm now looking.

Up to about a fortnight ago I knew next to zip about cars however I started reading up and I now know what a distributor and a carburetor do (although taking them apart would still be beyond me).

I have in fact been forced to step up the pace on looking for a bug. I really wish I had longer to research but my current ride (a 16 year old Proton) is failing fast. In the past fortnight she's been at the garage three times at a cost of 200 quid and she's still acting like she'll die at any moment. Hopefully she'll hold on long enough for me to find a Beetle, but I seriously doubt it.

Thus far I've bought a number of books and back issues of relevant magazines and joined the forum over at http://www.volkszone.com. I'll say more about those things and how useful they've been at a later date but for now I would like to comment briefly on just one, or rather the 90 back issues of Volks World Magazine that I picked up on eBay.

At the moment I'm kinda skimming through them reading the articles that appear most relevant to my current situation or that catch my eye. Perhaps the thing that has been most useful so far is that they've helped me to identify what it is that I like about Beetles.

At a first glance you might think all VW Beetles are all the same but if you look just a little more closely there are a plethora of variations. These are not just differences in the way they looked when they rolled off the production line, but include the numerous modifications that people have made to them since. If you'd asked me a couple of weeks ago I wouldn't have been able to consciously identify the difference between a vehicle that makes me say "Yeah, it's a Beetle, so what?" and one that leaves me unable to speak because I'm drooling too much. It turns out that what I like is a cross between the 'Cal look' and the 'German look' although it's fair to say that I drool more over the really custom jobs than over definitive examples of either style. If those terms mean nothing to you, and you'd like them to, then you should do some research or return to this blog at a later date when, hopefully, you'll be able to see what I mean.