Monday, October 31, 2011

Down On The Street

Running over to one of Celeste's friend's houses the other day, I noticed this scarlet vintage Beetle street parked a couple of houses down.

Looking very similar to the red '64 I had back in Boulder over a decade ago...
painted in a shameful '94 Mustang orangish-red, with a big scoop of orange peel texture

...was this '65.
Lightly altered through the years with fresh paint, white fender piping, add-on whitewall trim (partially obscuring a massive sidewall blister on the front tire at about 3 o'clock), solid black window trim and a mild drop...
...along with some tacky Pep Boys-grade decklid badges spelling out "VW 65" and a set of mos-aligned mufflers. I imagine the car has a powerplant larger than the original 1200cc unit pushing it along with nap-inducing runs to 60MPH.
The repro black door panels and seat covers provide some contrast to the bordello-red dash, but are a bit too funerary for my tastes. My '64 had two-tone light grey and cream white vinyl. But hey, if that's what the owner prefers, more power to him/her. My Beetle saw the 1980s aftermarket tape deck get chucked into the dumpster to make room for an original 6v Becker (I think) AM radio. Hmm, going backwards to a stock head unit in a cheap red toy car, I'm sensing a pattern here. Living in Boulder the best radio station was on AM anyway - CU's Radio 1190.

Still nice to see yet another air-cooled VW plying the streets.

1 comment:

Keith said...

I vividly remember sticking my nose through the partially rolled down passenger side window of your beetle and smelling that unmistable air-cooled VW smell. Horsehair stuffing in the seats FTW!