Dave's 1975 Family Heirloom Build

[owdlvr]

I thought for sure I had started a thread on this car years ago, but apparently not. I'm actually not sure how many of us stop in here anymore, but figured what the heck...might as well start a build thread.

This here is my 1975 Standard beetle, as photographed back in 2008.



The car was originally bought when I was 4 years old, in the early 1980's, and dad repainted it. As I understand it, I picked the blue colour. I fought my sister for front seat privileges (you got to scrape the inside of the windshield in winter!), learned to drive on it when I was 11, was 'borrowing' the car when I was 13, and I'm the guy that put that dent in the front fender when I was 18. That was 25 years ago, and the last summer that I drove the car. It was winter driven until about 1987 in Toronto, kept at the family cottage until 2008, and I shipped it out west to BC in December 2008. I've had the car in storage ever since.

Now, why do you store a car for 14 years without restoring it? Especially since I've bought at least eight, and restored four Beetles in that time frame? Well, stock beetles don't really interest me. Heck, every vehicle I own gets modified. But how do you modify the family heirloom??? That seemed sacrilegious. My dad pointed out to me about 6 years into my 14 years of storage that for the amount of money I was spending keeping this car, I could have painted it twice. But still, the internal struggle remained. Two years ago, as mom and I were driving an event together, the topic of shuffling cars and the storage problem came up. "Why don't you restore the '75?" she asked. I explained the problem, and mom replied "why would I have a problem with you modifying it? You do know that my favourite car out of your collection is the Rally Bug, right?" It's true...any time we do a driving event together, she asks me if we can do it in the Rally Bug. Headsets and yelling to hear each other just don't seem to bother her.

Then, this past summer, I had my red German Look beetle out in Ontario and dad took it out for a 'quick spin around the block'. He's driven the Rally Bug, which has a similar 2110cc engine, but the German Looker is far more civilized. He kept taking turns away from the house, instead of back to it, and in the German Look you can have a conversation with your co-driver without yelling at all. We arrived back at their house, dad looked at his completely stock '79 Beetle. Before getting out of the car he turned to me "You know," he mused, "I now understand why you put big motors into these cars...it's kinda fun." By dinner it was agreed that I should build the family heirloom car into the car I want. It should be the car in my collection that I always reach for they keys first. The car I want to take on every event, as the first choice. And so, in December 2023...14 years almost to the day after moving it across the country, I brought it into my shop for the teardown.