Hi all! I'm a middle-aged car lover. Doesn't sound all that exciting really, and that's pretty much me all round. Loved cars as long as I can remember, and the first car I ever helmed, from my grandmother's lap as a three year old, was a 60's Beetle.

While I often struggle to remember where I've left my glasses, or what I had for breakfast, I have vivid memories of the Beetle... right down to my father purchasing it (from a lady with a canary-yellow beehive hairdo, drawn-on eyebrows, un-blended blue eyeshadow, and who smelled of old smoke), and his spannering under the house prior to releasing it to his mother-in-law's custody (I think he secretly wanted on for himself, as the process of whipping it up on stands and tuning, prodding and adjusting, followed by loading Number One Son - me - into the shotgun possie, and pedalling hard down to the corner and back seemed to take far longer than a cursory "check the oil and away you go").

That little blue car manifested everything that every kid always loved about Beetles - a cheery visage and of course the rorty flooka-tooka engine note that sounded great without actually signifying a great deal of power . Every trip to town was a great adventure and a lark, and it was certainly a sad day when Nana turned up once day in a semi-ratty white HB Torana instead of the VW.

When I got my licence and moved out of home, I needed to organise a car right quickly... I'd moved to the Illawarra on a Saturday, started work on the Monday, needed a car by Thursday so my olds could cut the apron strings and let me leave me to my own devices. The options were all from local used car lots, and while the old man found a couple of Beetles in there, by the time I got away from work, they were all sold, and so I was relegated to a mid-70's Corolla with lightweight bodywork (a sophisticated cardboard/bog composite, it seemed) and an appetite for points.

I graduated through a couple of "hot" (read tepid) hatches, and my next VW encounter was a Poraga purchased by a drinking buddy (I suspect it was on a dare). It was a laugh to blow around in that thing; it had any number of foibles which took a while to get to the bottom of.. like the smokescreen it would lay with any more than about 500ml of engine oil aboard... it ran fine like that - 130km/h on the freeway, reliable and trustworthy, but the reason became apparent when old matey implemented the Grand Plan.

We reefed the motor out one weekend, and stripped it ready to hand the crankcase to a local VW wizard... and did not find a single intact piston ring or un-split brass valve guide. That was worth a chuckle, and then we binned all the old crud and took the crankcase on a quest to the southern cave inhabited by a mysterious wizard, who sent it back two months or so later with a heap of metal machined out of it, but a lot of other stuff bolted to it that looked a lot bigger than the bits they replaced.

What we shoved back into the Poraga on a hung-over Sunday, was a 2.36-ish litre donk with a whopping big pair of Webers on top, and a spec sheet full of large numbers. It was initially a very tight motor and caused us no end of embarrassment if we stalled it when hot, as nothing else on the car had enough grunt to turn it over when it was hot. That sorted itself out with a handful of hours running though.

The maiden flight was just on dark on a warm Sunday, and turning right off Keira Street and giving it a bootful up Crown Street sounded more like a low pass in a Cessna than a dak dak... it was a truly frightening little car, and it's no surprise that he never let me drive it hehehe.

He swapped the motor into a late-model bug at a later date, and I subsequently left the area, and fell out of touch with him. I believe he sold it all on, and moved onto other automotive atrocities.

In any case, I've been saving my pocket money (a divorced father of three kids doesnt get much pocket money), and while I'm still well-short of a useful budget, I've been giving thought to the dark hole into which I will drop all my spare folding currency when the time comes... and while I harbour great and abiding love for a number of Falcon derivatives, and Porsches, and vans, and Kombis, and trucks, and Mustangs, and, and, and... The Project shall likely be a Beetle, of a indeterminate 60's vintage, and the more I dwell on it, the closer to standard it will likely remain... advancing age has removed the allure of ridiculous speed (although I will alway love the memories of my AU XR8 at a good clip around Lakeside), and the idea of the sort of weekend maintenance and tinkering that was eliminated by electronic ignition, fuel injection and most other technology of the past 30 years is one that appeals to me more and more.

So in any case, I've come here for inspiration, for fellowship, for contacts, and for the fun of seeing what marvellous creations and cars everybody loves and maintains!

Welcome aboard ScroopyNoopers.
Good luck with your search, this part of your opening post struck a chord with me....

hahaha, thanks for your welcome, Rob! I'm quite content to contend that the older I get, the faster I was

I'm over on the Clarence, in the midst of all the chaos of the W2B project! Actually heading to the Illawarra for a road trip at the end of the week so I'll wave on the way through in the wee small hours!

cheers,

Scott

Welcome Scott.
This is the place to find mild, wild and sometimes cars too!
But seriously,after passing down the Northern NSW coast after Xmas I'm certain you'll find no end of VW nuts here from the area. As well as the rest of us scattered around the multiverse.
Cheers
Terry

Thanks Terry... being only a hop, skip, and jump from Byron (well it's not a HUGE road trip!), veedubs have certainly never quite gone out of style round these parts. Finding one for me will be fun though!