I've never been a VW fan....my best friend and sax player in my band for years had Carmen Ghia and several VW microbuses...usually early 70s vans.....always had throttle cable issues and transaxle issues....he had spent half his life in Holland and Germany and told me when you bought a VW in Germany it came with two motors...one to work on and one to use hence the 4 bolt motor mounts....in the states we didn't get the spare motor. I remeber the early bugs you'd speed up and the lights would get brighter and wipers move faster....then when you slowed down the lights dimmed and the wipers slowed down.
Well, I was only a junior in high school and back then nobody knew what the value of cars would be and as a kid I didn't have much disposable income. Any money I had went to my car, stereo equipment and water skiing. My dad for years had a booth at the Portland Swap meet at the expo center as he specialized in Mustang parts and he would see old rusted 32 Ford parts and he would chuckle talking about how they threw better peices than what he saw being sold over the bank as garbage and now guys were paying big bucks for crappy parts.
Pretty sure they made them till 1968...because in '69 they introduced the TR6 (in The US), of which, I owned 3...'69, '71, and '76.
I remember when the 240z first came to the USA and that all the Z's sold out instantly. I believe their price was around $3k but were being sold for double that amount as there was much more demand than availability.
Of course they were different which is why I said "precursor"...the 2000 was discontinued after 1969 and the the next year in 1970 240Z was launched.
Those were never problems on my father's early 60s VWs. He used his van in his job as a bricklayer hauling all kinds of heavy stuff including me and a handicapped fellow living with us by the name of Art Honeyman. They made one or maybe it was two movies about Art. Art wrote a book of poetry including a poem about my father and one of his cigars that he loved to smoke.
well glad you liked them...I can only speak from my experience and I drove them alot for years with the band.....never liked Mercedes or Volkswagons....still don't....I think they're generally bad investments in the auto world....I think they were pretty much just fashion statements of the times. I'd buy an ugly dodge dart over a VW any day..those old darts were indestructable....my first car was one....I'd challenge any VW bug to a trip cross country against my old monkey shit brown dodge dart...see which one goes over the Rockies without a breakdown from overheating...same with vans....I'd buy any van over a VW...I think they are poorly designed
That was my first car in HS. In white. Wasn’t anything “special” back then. Now it’s worth some good money. Wish I still had it. Friend of mine completely restored one a couple years ago
My dad wants to get rid of it so there's extra garage space, but me and my bro always object lol Who knows if it will ever be restored,, lot of time and effort and money.
you have plenty of time and money....just find the effort bro or chip in with your brother and send it to bodyman to cherry out...my son in Santa Barbara would have that thing on the road in less than a week....he flips cars as a side biz..
Red ‘65 Ford Mustang. Mom let my dad keep it for about a year before trading it in on something more “practical”. As a 13 year-old, I thought practical sucked.
Well, precursor to me means an earlier generation of the same car. A Miata NA is a precursor for the Miata NB and down the line to the current ND - all are different generations of the same segment - a lightweight roadster. A Nissan 350Z was the precursor to the 370Z - both were affordable to mid-price coupes. The Datsun Fairlady (Roadster) and the 240Z were really cars that went to very different markets, the first was supposed to go against the MGB, Fiat Spider and Alfa Romeo Spider (semi affordable roadster market), the 2nd was a budget priced sports car - aimed at the entry level Corvette coupe market, really - they just reused the name in the Japanese market, the way that Mistubishi now sells a an Eclipse cross SUV because it is their sporty SUV, but it is really not going to the same market as the Mitsubishi Eclipse did in the early 90s. I would say it is the precursor to the Z only in the sense that Datsun did not have the capacity / interest to have multiple sports cars, but they really are very different cars that were aimed at different segments of the market.
My parents had anything from Jeeps and big American cars (A Ford Galaxie was a prominent part of my childhood) to different European cars, an Audi 100LS, First Gen VW Golf/Rabbit, VW Bug etc... - my father was a Citroen lover and we had multiple Citroen 2CVs (I believe my maiden car ride from the hospital was in a 2CV van) - as well as a Peugeot 403 - later in Europe they had a Citroen Visa, a Citroen GSA (loved that car), a Citroen BX and later a Peugeot 309 (from the time it was a 205 with a boot) and when I was in college, they had a 205 GTI (which was one of the greatest hot hatches ever made, what a lovely car that was, I would have loved to have kept it). When I was growing up we ran across a 2CV Sahara and I implored my father to buy it, he refused because it was not worth the hassle and was too complicated, but that was a big mistake - as they are super rare, less than 700 were ever made. This was a 4x4 2CV that solved the 4x4 problem using a simple french method - but putting a 2nd engine in the back to power the rear wheels. These cars go for over $100K now... Someone at our local car club brought a 2CV Sahara last year... Notice that gas cap in the driver door - the gas tank sits below the driver seat - since the rear is filled with another engine. There are 2 engines, 2 gearboxes in the car, and both are controlled by just 1 set of controls - so the engines /gearboxes are usually a little out of sync - so changing a gear might have one engage before the other - a very interesting driving experience...
I actually took my drivers test in a sou[ped up 1967 Ford Mustang. It had custom rims and tires along with dual glasspack exhaust and was before paint so it was primered in some areas. Looked like a kids hot car. I remember firing it up with the low rumble of the engine coming to life and all the tester could say was, "you have no seatbelts (not required at that time). I thought I was screwed, but I had an ace in the hole as I lived in the neighborhood where they take you on the test and I remember the tester saying it's almost as if I was anticipating his directions. I explained to him I lived in the neighborhood.
just looked it up and it was....they also had the 1600...Paul Newman raced a 2000 I believe....that 2000 line ended in 1970 which was the model I had ...I bought mine in 74
The first one was actually a 1500 - and actually came out before the MGB did - so while some people say that Datsun copied MG - that was just impossible for them to do. (Datsun did have a license to build Austins since the 50s - so it is not a surprise that a lot of the solutions that they came up with look a lot like what MG did when they built the MGB).
