Vero, a 1973 VW Super Beetle-The Beginning

I have decided to track my progress with my Bug on a blog. Not that I think it's particularly unique, but you never know, it may help someone. My father gave me this car for an incredibly low price back in 2006 (I think). I have been working on it ever since, taking a 15-month break to go to Afghanistan and do some fun stuff. It has been to Germany with me, and back. Much of the work was done there in Bamberg. Now I am back in San Antonio, Texas, trying to get her ready for the next show/race season, I have set my deadline to be March, 2011.

Here is how it all looked when I got started:

It was your basic 1973 1303. Stock 1600, Solex PICT-34. Before I bought it from him, I had helped my father install a new interior in it, plus get it tuned and running right. I, on the other hand, am not a "stock" kind of guy. I have been deeply obsessed with hot-rodding and customizing cars since I was 14-getting close to 20 years ago now. It all started at my grandparents' house over the summer, when my dad was bouncing between continents with the Army. My great grandfather brought me a huge trash bag full of old Hot Rod, Car Craft, Car & Driver, and Sport Truck magazines. I've been hooked ever since. I won't list the many, many cars I've built since then, but suffice it to say that when my dad got the Super, and I started helping him with it, I fell in love. You can reference my other blog posts to understand my love affair with Germany-so when I found out that these small, 1800 lbs German car with a fun style had just about infinite customization potential due to the huge international aftermarket available-not to mention the performance potential of such a lightweight body coupled with the more modern Macpherson strut front end offered by the Supers, and affordable, widely available turbo kits for the stock type 1 aircooled engines, I had to have one. It just so happened that my 6'4" father had decided that he didn't want to keep stressing his injured back getting out of such a tiny machine, so I got that one, with the understanding that if I ever got rid of it, I had to sell it back to him. Enough of the history, however. On with the build...

Picking up the car after my trip to Afghanistan and driving it across Bavaria to get it home was an interesting challenge, as the tires and virtually every other rubber part had dry-rotted. Including the brake lines. So between the bad brakes, bad tires, and very slippery cobble stone roads, I ended up with more work to do:

All in all, not that bad, because it gave me an excuse to start spending my deployment money. Not that I needed one. So, from Kerscher Tuning, Gmbh, outside of Munchen, I ordered some outside flared fenders and a fiberglass hood. I also committed to never, EVER, have a problem stopping again. Especially since I intended to put a fairly INSANE engine in the back of this little deathtrap. All "go" and no "woah" is a bad combination. So I ripped off all the fenders, and the hood, and replaced the front apron. Then I ripped off all the suspension and brakes and called John at Topline back in the states. He shipped me one of just about everything he offered for 1303's at the time, and I spent the next 6-8 months getting it all put together.

The front MAXX coilover kit, with the zince plated cross drilled disc brake kit and steel braided DOT brake lines. Also visible is the huge (for a bug, anyway) sway bar that Topline offers. Every bushing, bearing, and tie rod was replaced at this time with the highest quality upgrades I could find-all from Topline.

The rear brakes, same as the front-cross drilled and slotted and zinc plated. Also, the KYB GR-2 shocks on the stock torsion bars (dropped) and the rear sway bar plate visible on the suspension. The engine you can see is an 1835cc built on a stock case with twin 34 ICTs and an mild cam. The shortblock was reused for the completion of the engine project a few years later.

You may notice that the rotors are drilled for both a 4-bolt and 5-bolt. I planned on running Porsche phone dials on this car, the 16 inch 20-something ET, not the 50-somethings. I had bought and paid for a set from some guy on the Samba, but he took my money and never shipped them. So I ended up going with a set of the 15 inch ET52 (or whatever they are). With the flared fenders, new hood and apron, and those rims (with the MAXX struts set at the highest settings) the car looked like this when it left Germany:

It's higher than I had wanted, but you'll notice that it is sitting on cobblestone. Cobblestones are NOT the best road material to be driving a dropped vehicle on. At all. So she will go lower when she gets back to the US.