dune buggies and hotVWs March 2020

As some of you may already know, Volkswagen AG (Group) is the biggest automaker in the world, with over 10.8 million vehicles sold globally in 2018. Hard to believe, especially if you live in the USA, isn’t it? In the United States, Volkswagen Group delivered 638,184 units (Volkswagen: 354,064, Audi: 223,323, Porsche: 57,202, Lamborghini: 1,595, Bentley: 2,000, Bugatti: N/A) in 2018, which represent only 6% of VW’s global sales. The Volkswagen Group was founded on May 28th, 1937, being headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany, to manufacture the “People’s Car”, which would become known as the Beetle. Today, the group owns eight passenger car brands (Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, SEAT, Škoda and Volkswagen), one motorcycle brand (Ducati), and three commercial vehicle/truck/ bus brands (MAN, Scania, and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles). This global enterprise…

While sitting at my computer in the early evening of Friday, November 22, 2019, doing nothing but surfing Facebook, it suddenly hit me hard. My buddy Steve Walker posted on his page that “Kinky” Mick Tattersall had passed away. It took me a few minutes to understand the words I had just read. I had known Mick for almost 20 years. We met at the VolksWorld Show (UK), back when his friend Steve Gilbert presented his legendary Fridolin. Mick was a real gentleman, even if his very British humor sometimes made you doubt it. But he just made everybody laugh, often with words, sometimes with deeds. And he always had that mischievous grin on his face. We mostly met two, three, maybe four times a year at the big events in…

Super Beetle Gas Tank Hi Jon, I have a 1973 Super Beetle and I’m about to change the gas tank sending unit. Do I have to remove the gas tank to do this? I can’t find anything about the subject, including the Bentley manual. Any help would be very much appreciated. Beat Sigrist Columbus, IN Beat, the Super Beetle tank sender doesn’t go in with screws like a Standard Bug. It just drops in, then you turn a quarter turn or so to lock it in against a big O-ring. I honestly can’t remember if taking it out is clockwise or counterclockwise, go give it a go both ways. These can be quite stuck, so give it a rotational tap with a dull punch and hammer. It’ll pop right out. Be sure to put…

Ah, spring! Things are starting to come back to life around here! Time to start thinking about summer and putting together a soundtrack of cruising music! Yes, you could listen to a streaming service, but why not add some VW flavor to your playlist, with songs you’ll NEVER hear on Spotify or SiriusXM! One of the melodies on our playlist is “Hot Rod Volkswagen” by Bill Parsons, released in 1960 on the Starday label. It has a great rockabilly beat, and is all about a “Hot Rod Daddy” getting around town in his “Hot Rod Volks”. It’s not the same tune as “Hot Rod Lincoln”, which first hit the country charts around the same time, but maybe he derived his inspiration from that popular song. Another one is called simply “Volkswagen” by…

I graduated high school in 1984. It has never “felt” like a long time ago, but as the years pass and I do the math, I am constantly shocked about how much has happened since then and that glaring fact that it is now 2020… 36 years ago. It’s just crazy. If you had told me then, that decades later I would still be playing with Volkswagens and writing for hotVWs Magazine, I would have laughed in your face. I can clearly remember so many of the cars from the pages of the magazine from back in those days and have the most amazing memories of the big So-Cal events of the era. I will never forget opening up the first issue that I spotted one of my cars in.…

Volkswagen began building and testing prototype Transporters in 1949. It didn’t take long for the German automotive press to report on the new vehicles coming out of Wolfs-burg. In December 1949, we got what was perhaps the first Transporter as a “cover car”. It was a prototype Micro-bus, with all the early features that didn’t make it to production like vertical louvers, squared rib bumpers and the external fuel filler. The Transporter was new and exciting; now it is old and even more exciting. After figuring out a few things during the research and development phase, Volkswagen went ahead and started building the first production Buses in 1950, which is now 70 years ago. We are still three decades away from many people’s classic definition of antique, but anyone who has…