When I had an old Super Beetle, the joy of watching two strangers randomly hit one another while I was driving made up for the headache of owning one.
Waiting at stoplights and hearing some middle schooler yell “SLUG BUG!!!” and swing on his friend’s arm is great fun for 2/3rds of people involved.
Yah, I have to say that the appeal of a unique car, plus the appeal of the “FEATURE” license plate that was almost certainly already taken, and the possibility of eliciting violence all makes me sad that I’ve never owned one.
I had the worst of it because I had one from the last production year that had early fuel injection that they hadn’t worked the kinks out of and it was a convertible with California emissions equipment. Parts were rare, expensive, or were no longer made and you got to pick 2.
The muffler fell out in the middle of the road and nobody made it, so I had to get a used one from Oregon that was missing two pipes that nobody made, luckily I was barely able to save mine.
I really wish I had gotten a mid-60s to early 70s coup because the parts are common and cheap.
If you can’t do the work yourself, you would be fortunate to find one guy 30 miles away that could take a look eventually.
If I was a millionaire, I’d have a couple bugs that were fully restored, but short of that I will just enjoy the memories of my car inspiring violence in children.
and nobody made it,
Had to re-read that once to realize that it didn’t involve mass fatality. Was relieved!
If I was a millionaire, I’d have a couple bugs that were fully restored, but short of that I will just enjoy the memories of my car inspiring violence in children.
Same here!
Ive always said that the reason I cant have a VW beetle is id have to have 3 of them.
If I was a millionaire I’d have a 79’ convertible, a mid 60s coup with a big block dual carb, and probaby a Super coup electric conversion with a built 4 speed.
I would constantly be fighting the urge to put a Porsche engine in another one.
Then I’d go broke on a few busses…
Yeah Id have a Baja conversion, a bagged and slammed cruiser and a drag car because thwres something really punk rock about a drag beetle.
It was glorious. Warmed my heart to see little kids spontaneously start whaling on each other whenever I drove by.
Punch Buggy ftw
It was one of the perks of owning one.
The others were the fact it was a '69, so that was fun to say, and it had a semi-rare style of shift assembly known as an Electromagnetic shift. No clutch pedal, just press down on the stick and shift.
Great little car, miss having her. Reliable as could be, easy to maintain, got great mileage. She wasn’t the fastest or prettiest on the road, but she got you where you needed to go, and didn’t care what you put her through.
We called it “Beetle Bump” but same thing.
After the release of the redesign, it sort of stopped. Only really made sense for the classic version.
The shout was “punch buggy (color of car)” in the New York area.
“Punch buggy blue!” thump “Owww!”
We have this in Sweden but then it’s about yellow cars.
Finland too. Didn’t know it was that universal
Where I live, it used to be Twingos instead of Beetles for some reason.
I drove a '73 Super Beetle in the early 2000s for years and actually never once witnessed it happening unfortunately. I did take comfort in knowing it was happening all around me though.
The other nice thing about driving it was seeing other Beetle owners on the road and exchanging peace signs.
Had a '65 6-volt beauty (paid 500 in '77), and never even heard of slug-bug until years after I sold it in '88.
