About 2 1/2 years ago I was roaming around on the net and discovered Bill Moore's articles and The Register and became fascinated with these VW rarities.
I emailed him and he graciously replied and we have been carrying on conversations, but not on any schedule or regular frequency.
I have had some interesting and extended conversations with County Buggy Bill and have been helping him track the CB's here in the States.
I see Bill is a member of the forum.
Several US CB's have been resold, and we're finding new owners aren't always attuned to helping keep the tracking of these rare birds updated for The Register.
Example: We don't know what happened to Randy Carlson's Oldbug CB restoration of a couple of years ago. It was sold to someone in AZ, then it showed up in a Samba ad about a year later for $20,000 (US), and then disappeared. Carlson has no idea what became of it.
If you think CB's are rare in Oz, they are almost virtually unknown here, although there's a small group who know and appreciate them in the US
Bill knows of either 9 or 10 CB'c here in the US. There's some confusion about the number because two have been reported in Memphis, TN.
I believe those two are really only one car. That car was sold in the spring and the former owner won't divulge the new owner and the new owner won't communicate with Bill about the car. So it's real easy for them to drift off into oblivion here in the US and get stuck back in a shed or barn or garage, and probably lost to the the VW community here in the US forever.
Since they are rare even in Oz, you can see that when they get resold over here, it can become almost impossible to know what becomes of them.
Erich Kircher (Genrich on Samba) in California started showing his restored car in the spring and has been very open about it. I've also had some email exchanges with him.....great guy.....sent me a bunch of pics of the restoration. See:
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=228679&highlight=country+buggy
Reed Cowan in Minnesota is also fairly open about his car.
But many US owners just aren't interested in showing their cars or letting anyone know anything about their cars.
There's one about two hours away from me........RIGHT HERE IN INDIANA!!!!!, and the owner doesn't want to communicate at all about the car. I inquired and immediately got shut off. Strange........but, cie la vie.
Anyway I'm glad to have found this new forum specifically on CB's. I hope it will be a good place to learn and stay on top of what's going on with CB's in Australia. One day......some day........I'd love to have a CB.
Regards,
Steve
[ Edited on August 16th, 2007 by ztnoo ]
