Picked this car up today, 1960, fairly straight but has had repairs over the years and a bit of rust around the pillars and some holes in the floor pans in usual spots. Drives well though and has rebuilt stock motor, new tyres. Got it as payment for building a wood fired oven (which I still have to do) Needs left hand front headlight glass(bosch) are these easy to come by? Bonnet is kinked and droops when open due to knuckleheads forcing it before releasing the latch. Are bonnets easy to come by for these? Overall though is original and smells like it!

Good early bonnets can be hard to find...

I remember My Dad had a late 1960 model with the blinkers
and rare tail lamps....

He had steel re-enforcing added to the lip of the bonnet...

as they are very easily bent...

best to add the late model springs to the bonnet..

Car looks good...

what tail lamps does it have?? the ultra rare originals.??

or the more common 62>67 types....??

LEE

Hi again,

How about a pic of the rear?

and the wheels ?

and the speedo??

it looks very different to anything I have seen in a beetle..

I know I'm being picky here but the front narrow clear
blinkers look too far away from the body??
maybe just the angle of the pic..
they should be fairly close to the body...

maybe later front mudguards... nothing wrong with that...

but 1964 wide blinkers were out from the body more...

just an observation....

cheers

LEE

Hi Lee, don't know if these tail-lights are the rare ones. The speedo looks to be a home-made kmh conversion and the front blinkers appear original to me but my forte is L-bugs so don't really know

Had to do new reply for these two pics

Yes they are the very rare 'two-segment' tail-lights, only ever used (briefly) on German Beetles for the Italian market, and Australian-made Beetles from late 1960 to 1962. New ones are pretty much unobtainable. Amd yes, I think Lee might be right about the front mudguards, they look like slightly later ones. Doesn't really matter though.

The Aussie late '60 was the first to have push-button door handles, dished steering wheel with horn ring, front sway bar and padded sun visors, as well as the 40-bhp 1200 with auto choke and all-syncro box. It also has the redesigned, flatter petrol tank but as you can see, no fuel gauge just yet (that came in late '61).

Seems hard to believe now, but 1960 was the biggest-selling Beetle year ever in Australia - 24,388 of them were sold - and the Beetle was Australia's second-best selling car model, behind only the Holden, for that year only. It was overtaken by the Falcon and the Mini in 1961.

Interesting home-made metric converted speedo ! Nice straight car, would be a great resto project.

Thanks for that information, I respect this car more now, I will be slowly restoring this one, my plan was a '68 1500 I have but this one being licensed might jump the queue! I'm familiar with the non-synchro box on my brother-in-laws '59 he used to have and his gearstick seemed to have a longer throw forward for first gear and the stick actually seemed further forward, would this be so or am I having a touch of imaginitis?

Hey nice little bug