Rusty But Trusty

So, it’s another VW Beetle. Sure, it’s the desirable 1967, but we’re looking at a 1493cc flat four with a meager 53hp. And because the owner is either pretentious or ironic, there’s a Faux-Royce hood on it, and what looks like a rather rough rattle canned red metallic paint job. But wait, there’s more – can you see the wheels from a Toyota Tacoma, and the fake side pipes, and the nasty JC Whitney side mirrors? Why are we interested in this car? Read on to learn more about this 1967 VW Beetle for sale for $3800 in Hayward, CA.

Well, let’s pop the front trunk lid and at least admire all the extra luggage space that tall grill provides. Wait, what’s that? Well, this bug has been lifted off its pan and plopped on a Toyota truck chassis with a Dodge V8 crammed in between the frame rails. This is starting to look a little more interesting. You’ll want to ask questions and crawl underneath, but it looks like the seller has managed to maintain the overall proportions and stance of the car.

The seller does not specify which Dodge V8 is in there, but it’s probably safe to assume it’s a 318. Regardless, even a smaller V8 should be plenty of fun in something that weighs this little. Assuming the engineering of the conversion is sound, it would be fun to spend time attending to the details – improving the paint, bringing back some stock-looking wheels, or perhaps something more period correct, and generally making this look like a stock Beetle with a Rolls Royce hood.

Ordinarily, the interior is still a jumbled mess on shade-tree conversions, but this one looks fairly well done. It’s nice to see the interior is basically stock VW – the wheel is a matter of personal taste, but easily changed, and it might not be a bad idea to put a stock VW back seat in to continue the stealth look.

Okay, so maybe making it look like a stock bug would be hard. How about a Baja Rolls Royce Bug? Trimmed fenders, knobby tires, KC Hi-Lites on the roof, and a high stance? One could go a number of directions with this car – what would you do with it?

Tags: beetle, Feature, for sale, german, sedan, v8, volkswagen, vw

This entry was posted on August 18, 2014 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.