Der People's Kar

Before I fly to Tennessee this weekend for my daughter's wedding, I wanted to get this posted, and with the cost of gas still going up, I thought this would be a pretty good time to do it.

As a lot of folks know, my wife & I are very much into classic cars. In my lifetime, I've owned everything from Studebakers to Impalas, Galaxies to Packards, Oldsmobiles to Volkswagens................Volkswagens? "VW is a classic car?"

To ME they are! It's been said that the VW Beetle is the one "bug" they've never found a cure for! I've been driving them alongside my big American cars for about 13 years now, and anymore, when you see me running around Mountain Home, 29 times out of 30, it's in one of our old Beetles.

I remember a VW advertising slogan in the 60's, back when I thought it was only a car for nerds, hippies and school teachers. The slogan read verbatim: "Few Things in Life Work as Well as a Volkswagen."

"Yeah....right," I thought.

Today, I KNOW they were right!

From Black Forest clocks to Walther Pistols to the Mercedes-Benz, the Germans are known for building things that last, and the old air-cooled VW Beetle is no exception. 35 to 50 years later, there are MILLIONS of them still on the road, including the five that Donna & I own. Simple, sturdy and dependable, this is one tough little dude!

Like ANYTHING mechanical, they break once in awhile, as you might expect after FORTY years, but when they do, they're relatively cheap and easy to fix. Parts are plentiful, and gas?....When I roll into our local Sinclair station, it's usually just for a cup of coffee. They're better on ice and snow than our heavy cars, and those little air-cooled engines are very user-friendly, even in the coldest winters.

To be sure, they aren't adorned with creature comforts. There's no A/C, heat is sometimes spiratic at best, there's not a lot of room in them, and, while you could drive to New York and back reliably in one.......you wouldn't really want to!

But while they might not be "God's gift to the American highway." I can tell you first hand, they are a CONSIDERABLY better car than most people think they are. You can go places in an old Volkswagen that you'd never attempt in most other cars. They're easy to maintain, great on gas, and durability? You'll see some of them in people's yards awaiting restoration, but you will seldom find an old bug in a wrecking yard. They've become somewhat of a "cult" car now, and their collectablity has been rising for some time, although you can still find decent ones in the $2500 to $3500 range.

They've been around since 1938, originally built by Ferdinand Porshe, upon Hitler's demand for an economical and dependable "People's Car" (Volkswagen), that the average German family could afford. Hitler, an amateur artist himself, drew a sketch for Porshe and told him the car should be "shaped like a beetle, because you only have to look at nature to see what true streamlining is." Factory lore has it, that's where the nickname "beetle" came from.

By the end of the production run in 1979, more beetles had been built, than Model-T's.

They're a great little car, and certainly an option to ponder as OPEC and our own oil companies continue to pick our pockets. Good investment too, because while there are a few newer cars that might get a little better gas mileage, they lose value when you drive them off the lot, and continue to drop. The old bugs are worth SEVERAL times today, what they were when new.

Because there is so little to go wrong with one, there are still millions of them running around out there, even after 4 and 5 decades. How many decades is that new Saturn or Lexus good for?.......and HOW much did you pay for that?.......and what'll it be worth ten years from now?

$3.29 for regular this morning...............ah, that homely lookin' old bug.........just gets "purtier" all the time!