The VW love-hate fest (threadjack)

[irontri]

70 microbus, $700, lasted 1500 miles, blown engine, rust-chocolate brown
69 dune buggy, full resto (show winner quality), chrome, blue, and white, stolen in Hawaii (Oahu)
69 pop-top, nicely maintained, bought, used, and sold back on Oahu, HI
73 thing, army gray, hard top (dark gray), $1500, blown engine, replaced w/ another 1600 for $200, sold for $2300?!?!?, bought, used, and sold on Oahu, HI
64 kombi (bus w/ 13 windows), full resto, 1835, lowered (redux taken out), $14100 invested, sold for $13k, this was in 2003, I've got cool pics if interested
93 Eurovan MV weekender, pop-top w/ rear fold-out bed, lived in for 3 summers, 80K miles in 4 years, covered about 30 states, loved it but very expensive to repair and started to rust. This was a very bad year for the Euro's, plus the stupid 5 cyl.

 

[zipmartin]

I had a Karmann Ghia in high school. Its little 36-hp. engine got 40 mpg…and that was when gas was only 36 cents a gallon. Less than a penny a mile for gas!

On a 300 mile trip in the dead of winter in Minnesota, I spent far more on many spray-cans of windshield defrost – needed every several miles to see the road - than I did on gasoline.

Although I nearly froze, I still loved that car!

Driving my '61 bug in Illinois in the middle of the winter, left foot hot, the rest of me bundled up and cold, peering through the lower left corner of the windshield where the so-called defroster managed to get enough heat on the windshield to keep it some-what clear, the rest of it covered on the INSIDE with a layer of frost and even ice...ploughing through the snow-drifts like it was 4-wheel drive.....ahh the memories.

 

[phrogpilot73]

Driving my '61 bug in Illinois in the middle of the winter, left foot hot, the rest of me bundled up and cold, peering through the lower left corner of the windshield where the so-called defroster managed to get enough heat on the windshield to keep it some-what clear, the rest of it covered on the INSIDE with a layer of frost and even ice...ploughing through the snow-drifts like it was 4-wheel drive.....ahh the memories.

You sure you weren't driving a modern day HMMWV?

 

[mb1k]

managed to get enough heat on the windshield to keep it some-what clear, the rest of it covered on the INSIDE with a layer of frost and even ice...ploughing through the snow-drifts like it was 4-wheel drive.....ahh the memories.

Ditto. Had a '74 partially restored-nearly-concourse 914 (don't ask, I was second owner and appreciated the PO's nice work). It was shite in the OSU winters. I would be smug and incorrectly proud of myself after having scrapped the widows and bathing them in store bought de-icing fluid. Thinking, again incorrectly, that that gave me anti-ice capability (hey, I was only 19 years old). Nope. One memorable day, I was navigating the clover leaf onramp to 270 and got side swiped by a blast of freezing rain and gusts. The windshield went IFR in minutes and us, air-cooled engine guys, with no heat to defrost. I don't know how I didn't crash into someone else or go off into a ditch.