HeyBub wrote:
Smitty Two wrote:
The original VW bug was inexpensive to buy, and relatively inexpensive
to repair. That is hardly the same as being reliable.

Yeah, but how many cars come with a tool kit? Admittedly, the tool kit
wasn't much. It consisted of a cylinder with two socket ends (which fit
virtually every nut on the car), two screwdrivers, a pair of pliers, and a
metal rod used to turn the socket cylinder.

There's a video floating aroung (Guiness Book of Records folks) showing a
crew removing a VW engine, moving the engine four feet from the rear bumper,
reinstalling the engine, then driving the bug away. In one minute, four
seconds.

My motor pool guys would repair any VW engine, on the mess hall table,
for no charge and in about twenty minutes. In the service in Germany in
the 60's and 70's there was the proverbial "$50 Volkswagen", which you
bought for $50 from the guy going back home, and sold it for $50 to the
next guy when you left. Some of those things had titles as long as your
arm and had changed hands literally dozens of times.

My "$50 Volkswagen" a 1960, with tire chains on it, would take on any
blizzard with style; being air cooled, it never failed to start in
subzero weather, and it would run on the Autobahn all day at 80mph.

When winter hit in Southern Bavaria, and since I lived 20 miles from
base on mountain roads, I left the 2002TI at home and drove the Bug by
choice for the duration.

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Last update: 10/22/08
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