I had the urge to travel and one way to save was to reduce transport costs, so I became a beetle people. My first was a 1956 bug (with the oval rear window) 36 horse, werk wagen with six volt electrics and the Hitlers Revenge heating system (it would keep you cold when it was cool and hot when it was warm, and never the right temperature). Cost me $100 from a fellow worker, never had a block heater and would start down to minus twenty F. When it was cold you had to keep the window open to see through the windshield but she never failed me when it counted. The lady who lost control on the ice wiped out three parked cars in a game of dent dominoes, and the bug was #4. Pushed the engine cover up and over the fan housing and she had to be towed for the first time. When my ranting was over the insurance company gave me $125 and the car so with travel plans brewing and a world to wander I kicked in another $75 and bought...
...the van, the bus, the hippymobile that was, like, cool. It was
The '60's.
A 1961 with a hatched motor but good body began my short career in VW engine swaps (undo the bolts, pull off the wires and tubes and just lift it out, drop the new one in and be gone, far out man). The '56 motor fit in with a little judicious remodelling of the fan housings and I was on the road in the epitome of underpowerd vehicularity. Any breeze would slow her down and a stiff headwind meant second gear if one were foolish enough to try. Should one attain, (with a tail wind) fourth gear, there was a certain test of manual dexterity to be performed as the end of a long string of rubber bands had to be hooked around the gearshift to keep it in place. It was noisy and smokey and slow, and a great place to sleep off a party, I think it qualifies as my second favourite vehicle. Ran it here, there and everywhere and eventually sold it for $75.
1963 FIAT 600d. I bought this strange puppy for $125, suicide doors and all, but didn't put a lot of miles on it before the motor blew. The licence plate frame says that some time in its past it was sold by Evel Knievel's daddy. It's still sitting out there in my back forty, waiting for a miracle I suppose.
1973 FIAT 128. The first brand new car I ever bought straight from the showroom floor. My wife learned to drive in this car and it took us to Keg River and into the Northwest Territories as far as Fort Simpson and Hay River. Battered and brutalized by the "ninety miles of Hell" that was the Slave Lake-Wabasca road it still pooted around quite a bit after we moved south.