The First day
My first car was a light orange, autobahn coloured, 1300 Beetle, of rth princely sum of £275. This was my entry to world or air-cooled Volkswagens, which has kept my interest for over 30 years. I never did any huge work on this car but it served me well, I replaced a door and a front wing but apart from some of the normal service items I did not do too much to the car for the time I had it, although I did curse it at times as it suffered front he dreaded carb icing, but that is another story. Over the following years I had a 1303 Super beetle which I kept for an eternity, this one I was more confident work with and did many things to it, from engine rebuilds to suspension work, I did everything including a total strip down before it was painted.
I then acquired a 1976 VW-Porsche 914 which I drove in the uSA and brought back with me to the UK, this is now undergoing a very slow rebuild, 5 years and counting.
I decided in May 2013 that I needed a Beetle to play with again, and this time I thought I will get myself a Karmann Cabrio, this is the story of saving a 1973 Karman Beetle Cabriolet from the scrapyard in the sky.
I found it on classic and sportscar website it is a survivor, three owners from new and the original owner had it gifted to her on Valentine's day. The car looked ok, not molested too much but i could see that the strengthening undersells had been welded a multitude of times. It did not look too bad or so I thought. Anybody who has ever worked on an old car will know that it is always worse then it looks. This car was no better, another year or two and it would have been kinder to send it to the scrapyard in the sky.
So have a look at the journey from a survivor to the re-emergence of Karmanns finest.