Here is the first car I ever owned - a 1967 beetle. I rebuilt and did it up with my father, and drove it for 3 years before it died an inglorious death rear ending some dopey woman who had run out of fuel and stopped in the right had lane in the middle of the night.

It was painted a daewoo metallic green, and began life with the original 1600 single port and standard exhaust / carby, progressing up to a new 34 pict and thunderbird extractors, and finally an 1800 type 4 with 40DCNF weber and an ignitor points replacement in a 009.

It was a brilliant little car, but I didnt realise how good I had it until I lost it.

I miss it regularly now.

Anyways, after the accident I still needed a car to drive to uni and back, and luckily it happened during end of year exams. Dad happened to have tow cars for me to choose from to do up over the holidays !!! a 63 (complete with flared rears + torana tail lights 'yuck' or a 1957 baja. Dad was always picking up stray vw's in Kalgoorlie in those days.

I picked the Baja, and in 6 weeks we did all the rust repair work, body prep, paint, hodliner, swapped the 57 body on to the 67 pan and got it all sorted. Fasted rebuild ever done by us, and all while working full time. Dont know how we managed it in retrospect.

The 57 got 31x10.5 R15's on the rear, and 14" light truck tyres on the front. Combined with a rear turned half a spline up (after the photo) it gave quite a good ride height.

The baja never really got any off road treatment unforunately. Now I look back and wonder where it could have taken me. It kept the 1800 for 12 months, and then I got a silly idea about wanting to go faster, and sold the baja to buy a twin cam corolla (long story). I would love to know where it ended up actually - I sold it to a guy called dave from Bibra Lake in Perth, and never saw it since.

Nice, but isn't a '57 an oval?

It was a late 57 - big rear window and new dash, but still had the oval style pull out door handles and semaphores.

We had an oval baja body at one stage, but was so rusted it was at the end of our line of several projects, and didnt get attended to before we left Kal - we sold it (with a pan with raised front beam and split kombi box in the rear) to someone for $200 with a mismatched baja kit included.

Things you have to do when you move house.