Was just sitting back reminiscing, and remembered when I was a wee nipper.
My dad used to sell Volkswagens in Canberra about a million years ago, and he used to bring home all sorts of models over the years.
I particularly remember my mum driving all the neighbourhood kids to school in a . . . wait for it . . . 23 Window Samba Bus! It was White over red, and was one sweet ride. If only we knew what it would fetch today! Hind sight is a wonderful thing.
Also one weekend my dad bought home a huge wooden box - and when I say huge I mean it. In those days some special VW's were shipped over to Australia in wooden crates - fully assembled. That box became our cubby house once the appropriate door and windows were cut out. Ah memories, ah good times.
Anybody else got fond memories of their VW youth? Why not share?
Old Timer
air is cool, but air-cooled is cooler!
1967 Aussie Built Type 1 1915 Deluxe
HEY
THOSE ARE ONLY THINGS WE CAN DREAM ABOUT.... 😠😠
WE ARE LUCKY TO SEE A 23 WINDOW SAMBA....😂
BUT YOU HAVE BEEN IN ONE... LOL
I SUPPOSE I WAS LUCKY ENOUGH TO BE INTERESTED IN CARS WHEN YOUNG GOING TO SCHOOL AND REMEMBER LLOYD HARTNETS,, LOTS OF TEMPO MATADOR TRUCKS AND RED PMG VANS - AND BEETLES...
AND THEN THE COUNTRY BUGGIES AND 68 BEETLES WITH BLACK AND WHITE WHEELS AND THE IMPORTED TYPE 3S
WITH HIGH COMBUSTION ENGINE AND TWIN CARBS,,,
AND CHECKERED UPHOLSTERY...
LEE
- Helping keep Air Cooled VWs on the road - location: SCONE in the Upper Hunter Valley - Northern NSW 320 kms NNW of SYDNEY---
After I bought my 1st Beetle, in January, 1960, my Dad started looking closely and asking a lot of questions. Then he wanted to have a drive.😁 Next thing, he goes out and trades his '51 Holden in on - you guessed it - a new Beetle. We had two 1960 Beetles in the driveway! 👍
The thing that bugged me (pardon the pun), was that his car had all the 'new' features, such as blinkers, baked enamel, etc.😠 Fixed him the following year - I bought a 40 hp. Beetle! 😂😂
Cheers, Greg
I'd rather wear a Beetle out by racing it than by polishing it!
I was born in 1957 and started surfing at the age of 7, the early years were mostly spent at Torquay and many surfers in those days had kombi vans, there would allways be a few kombis at the back beach carpark and I think the vw seed was planted back then. 1974 comes around and I am riding my pushbike into Geelong along the water front to go fishing at the old cunningham pier ( now known as Smorgies pier) For what ever reason, we decided to ride into town and had only crossed the road, when I spotted a kombi under a carport ( In those days, a splitty was called a kombi) I went and knocked on the front door of this two story building and was greeted by a lovely old lady, I asked about the kombi and she told me that it hadn;t been in use for over a year and what on earth would I be interested in that old jalopy for? To cut a long conversation short, I was told to come back the following week and she would have an answer for me. Well that day arrived and I was at that brown brick building an hour before they even opened, eventually, a car pulled up and the lady hopped out, she told me that I could have that old jalopy for $100. A couple of days later, that kombi was getting towed by my dad home, we had six months or so to get my kombi ready before I turned 18, my dad painted the kombi metalic brown with a white roof, we got it registered and that became my first surfmobile and I practically lived in that kombi down the coast. The building where I bought it from was called ?The Missions to Seamen and for those of you that came down to Geelong for Re Volks, well, that building was right across the road!!! I will scan the only pics I have of it and post them on here very shortly, Thanks Old Timer for starting this thread as many memories are flooding back into my head. cheers Frank
Adventure Before Dimentia
Thanks for the opportunity OT
Roughly the mid'60s some time:
A group of us would regularly go to the Hillclimb invites from other car clubs. This time, it was the Lithgow Hillclimb - not much of a hill - a sprint really.
A '62? Beetle: (Panzer Green with a Hitler Black side flash, according to the 'climb commentator),
A '58 Austin Lancer: (117mph ConRod Straight flying eighth)
A '52 Holden: (ex cab with the usual hot-up bolt-ons)
On the way back to Sydney, we turned off to the abandoned Zig Zag Railway - a series of Zigs and Zags up the sandstone escarpment from the Western Slopes to the top of the Blue Mountains Plateau. Through a curved dark tunnel, out into daylight on a viaduct 100 metres high, through another tunnel, another viaduct - thirteen of them. The rails had been pulled up so the surface was very dry loose dust. Hi beam on, not very effective for the lead car, impossible for the other two, through the dust in the tunnels.
We started following each other through at speed, but needed to change that as the vis' for the second two cars was nil - if you dropped to far back, you couldn't see the tail-lights or where the tunnel walls were (girls screaming).
After each run, we needed to wait for the dust to blow out of each tunnel.
We ended up doing single runs and timing them. The starter (girfriend) positioned across the escarpment, higher up or lower down, depending upon which direction we were running. She would wave a hanky from about a kilometre across the valley and hit the stop watch at the same time.
While the Austin and the Holden were much more powerful than the Dub, they were just not competitive on the dust. We called that day "Hitlers Revenge".
You could see by the road surface, that others had already been at it before us.
How we survived, I know not.
I recon' that the unofficial "Zig Zag Hillclimb" would have been as famous as Pikes Peak if still going today.
Arrive home - Parents: "Did you have a good day?" Kids: "Yair, it was alright."
oldtub
No wonder 'Senior Citz' are such good drivers, oldtub - hope Chris (amazeer) doesn't read this.😂
Cheers, Greg
I'd rather wear a Beetle out by racing it than by polishing it!
When I was a kid,again back in the 60's, in England we used to holiday in Kent and in the summer Folkestone used to have a carnival (parade through the town centre). Folkestone was where VW imported all their cars before distributing them throughout the UK and being an important part of the community took part in the carnival with all sorts of vehicles,even dressing them up if you like, but the part I remember most was 'The ugly bug ball', beetles all tarted up to look like different types of insects.
Hey OT, great idea for a thread! Your Dad must have worked for Greg Cusack, the VW dealer in Canberra. His main showroom/service centre was in Mort St Braddon, and he also had a showroom and petrol station in Manuka. In 1960 his Manuka station had the highest petrol sales in the ACT! The site was sold and bulldozed in the late '60s and today it's the Shell station opposite Manuka Oval. The original Cusack buildings at Braddon still exist, and well worth a visit. There is a wonderful steel VW symbol set into the cement of the footpath outside. Greg Cusack competed in the Redex and Mobilgas trials, raced VWs for years and drove the first Formula Vee imported into Australia. He retired to the Gold Coast in the 1980s and, as far as I know, is still with us.
Most of large wooden crates were used to ship in CKD parts for assembly at Clayton. They were shipped from Germany to Port Melbourne, then sent by train to Clayton. Each crate did not have parts for one car! Like parts were shipped together, and 8 crates held parts for 12 cars. CKD assembly was phased out in the late 1950s as full production came on line. By the late 1960s when local CKD assembly resumed, modern steel ISO containers had been introduced.
Yes Oldtub, my Dad used to talk about driving on the old Zig Zag line as well - it must have been one of those adventures that young blokes did back in the day. You can't do it now as new narrow gauge track has been laid and it's used for the Zig Zag tourist railway, between Bottom Points and Clarence.
My Dad bought a used '54 Beetle in 1957 when he was teaching at Parkes. He used to say it was 60 miles from Orange to Parkes and he used to do it in 59 minutes! He wrote it off in 1959 trying too hard, and bought a brand new Manly Tan '59 (BTF-933) from the Parkes VW dealer, R R Nock Pty Ltd. He owned this car for 19 years and did over 400,000 miles in it. It took me (and later my brothers and sister) home from the maternity ward at Bankstown Hospital - so the first car I rode in was a VW. We learned to drive in it. It went through at least four engines and two gearboxes over the years and I can still remember Dad having the engine in a million pieces on the garage floor on Sunday afternoon but back together and running to take him to work by Monday morning. He sold it to his mate across the road in 1978 and it was written off a few years later. We put a photo of the '59 in a frame on the top of Dad's coffin when he passed away in 2005.
Santa's bringing me a USB slide/photo scanner for Xmas, so I can start scanning and restoring Dad's collection of thousands of Kodachrome slides. There are lots of '50s/'60s VW photos in there, so that should be fun.
If it wasn't for Dad I would never have loved VWs, and later bought one myself - thanks Dad! And now my daughter loves VWs too (Kombi and Golf anyway) but she wants an Eos for her first car in 8 years time...
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Ok here's some very old pics cheers Frank
Adventure Before Dimentia
