Hello
Wanted to gather feedback on your thoughts in relation to the accuracy of the birth certificates issued by Stiftung VW in Germany.
As many of you are aware you can send in a letter. (Sample posted below if you want to do it) VW will then send back a letter with birth cert stating year of manufacture, colour options, interior colour and they will verify IF you have the original engine no. If it is not they will not tell you what the original engine number was(due to privacy reasons).
Anyway point I raise is that my beetle "looks" original, has had one prior owner yet nothing matchs the birth certificate!
So two things can explain this -
1 The car is totally not original ,and the old lady before me hated the black interior so much she decided to change it to RED, then repray the car savanah beige instead of cloudy white and replace the engine with another 69 model 1500?
OR
the records kept back in 69 could be inaccurate.
Please share your experiences?
Copy of letter:
Stiftung AutoMuseum Volkswagen
Frau Neefe
Dieselstrasse 35
Brieffach 1003
38446 Wolfsburg
GERMANY
011 49 5361 52010
Dear Frau Neefe:
I would like to enquire about the Stiftung AutoMuseum Volkswagen to research data of an old Volkswagen vehicle from the vehicle database and to draw up a vehicle identity/birth certificate with the recorded data.
The Vehicle Identification Numbers of the vehicle is:
119890111
The engine number is as is:
OH-1109111
The car is a 1969 1500 beetle in Savanah Beige. It is stamped ‘Made in Germany”
I understand the price for each certificate is 40 Euro? Is this correct?
I understand you take MasterCard and Visa. Accordingly, please charge my Visa card for the appropriate amount. 12345212121 (expires 07/11)
Please send the certificate to:
Your Address
things change over the years sometimes its the records sometimes its the car
I have one for my '64 Ghia and it is spot on, as is the one for my '66 Westy Camper,
A mate got one for his '68 imported Bug and it is all over the place, wrong paint colour, wrong interior, even has it as a LHD car imported to Canada. 🤪
FAHRVERGNUGEN;
Description of a pleasurable sensation,
Experienced when a car and it's driver are in mutual harmony, A unique driving experience, Pleasure, Satisfaction,
A feeling experienced by Volkswagen Drivers.
Menangler wrote:I have one for my '64 Ghia and it is spot on, as is the one for my '66 Westy Camper,
A mate got one for his '68 imported Bug and it is all over the place, wrong paint colour, wrong interior, even has it as a LHD car imported to Canada. 🤪
Very nice collection Menangler.....
cant help but feel a little dissapointed as I wanted to feel like she was "original". Looks like it will always debateable.
But at the end of the day if we love our Vws then thats all that matters....and I DO!
😀:
Another possibility is that the stamps used to punch the number are pretty average, and it is sometimes hard to tell what the number actually is. My 56 has an '8' that looks exactly like a '3', I only picked it up when I got the Vic rego history. A bloke on TheSamba had a similar experience with his 54, and got the wrong birth certificate.
I suggest having a very good look at the chassis number at both locations to double check you have the correct chassis number.
I have heard from the US that the Birth Certificates are now issued from a very small department and they are NOT accurate any more.....
So, I wouldn't throw My 40 Euros at them....
You can usually find the details yourself - approx..
but maybe closer than the VW Museum these days...
One US owner had the original sales docket with the VW options listed on it... as numbers... eg M109
They couldn't tell Him what the option numbers He had were???? and the colors etc were all wrong...
Lee
- Helping keep Air Cooled VWs on the road - location: SCONE in the Upper Hunter Valley - Northern NSW 320 kms NNW of SYDNEY---
If the Beetle is indeed a 'Made in Germany', then there is no reason why the data on the birth certificate should be wrong - ignoring human error, of course. For example, 119 is certainly a 1969 chassis number, and being the 809,111th of the year, puts it at about three quarters of the way through the model year - so about May 1969 at a guess. Have a look at your five wheels - each of them has a date stamp in the centre, near the stud holes.
But this won't necessarily be true for Australian-sold Beetles. Beetles sold here after September 1968 were assembled locally from German-made CKD kits, so any German info on manufacture dates is likely to be inaccurate - the CKD parts had to be made in Germany, then shipped in crates to Melbourne, before being welded together, painted and finished. You could easily allow an extra six months...
also eg the wheels may be from a stock pile just as the speedos are
all stamped but maybe 3 months or so b4 assembly in Germany ......plus 3 months if assembled in AUS
want any vw bits old but like me, Made in Germany!!!
I have a certificate for my 56 floorpan and it says it was sent originally to Fiji, Not entirely impossible, but I dont think so. It also says that colours are unknown. Basically, all it does is to confirm that its a 56 pan.
That IS the usual problems with the certificates NOW...
- Helping keep Air Cooled VWs on the road - location: SCONE in the Upper Hunter Valley - Northern NSW 320 kms NNW of SYDNEY---
