Does anyone have photos taken at the first 'Bug-Ins' in the 1970s?
The Australian Bug-Ins were (are) not like today's VW shows like the Nationals, Valla Park, Day of the VW, Dubs by the Pub etc. They were an interstate club getogether built around a one-day dirt motorkhana. There were usually BBQs, tourist trips to local sights and a trophy presentation dinner.
Below is the ad for the first one, held at Albury in NSW in 1970, including a day of motorsport at the now defunct Hume Weir. It's from the former VW Club of NSW's magazine, although the VW Club of SA was the driving force behind the event. For the next few years the name 'Bug-In' wasn't always used, or used intermittently; sometimes it was just called the Easter Interstate Motorkhana.
There were attempts at rotating the hosting of the event each year, but not with any consistency. The locations, up to 1978 (all the issues I have read so far) were:
Does anyone have any old colour slides or prints of these events? I'd like to reproduce the old articles as they make interesting historical reading, but 1970s VW club magazines don't have any photos in them.
matberry ·
Sorry mate, my first Bug-In that I have some pics of is the Sunshine Coast one in '81
BRUTUS ·
The first Bug-in I went to was Adelaide, also, rather strangely in 1981.
Plenty of photos, from that one on.
They were held in anticlockwise rotation from 1976: Perth, A, M, S, P again in '80 etc. until Sunshine Coast or Dirvers Club joined in, must have been 1984 I think.
matberry ·
Well I had to blow the dust off, the old trophy for peoples choice was actually 1982 Bug-In...sorry for the confusion 🙂
Phil74Camper ·
Yes that's one reason why I would like to preserve the old articles for posterity, so the VW history (what there is) isn't lost.
I will keep reading and scanning the old NSW Club magazines, but at this stage I'm only up to 1978. The first one I went to was the Sydney one at Plumpton in 1983 (or 1984? Can't remember) when I was a timekeeper. I remember that in the field of 20+ cars, only two VWs were competing (Terry Marsh and John Weitenberg), so it reallly wasn't a 'Volkswagen' event any more. The rest were Minis and Mokes, Datsun 1600s, Mazda Capellas and Corollas etc - even an Alfasud.
Later on we did try running it together with the VW Nationals (at Richmond and Parklea) a couple of times in the early 1990s when it returned to NSW, but it didn't really work. More people were intested in going on rides in the VW T3 Syncro around the paddock. Since then it's more or less died out, in NSW at least, and the old NSW VW Club folded five or six years ago.