Day of the Volkswagen 2013

After a night of unseasonable downpours, Sunday 1st of December dawned pleasant and mild - perfect car show weather!

This year's turnout was better than last year - 160 cars were on display ranging from some very early Beetles right through to modern VWs and Audi's.

The Volkswagen Club of Western Australia did a great job organising the event. http://vwclubwa.com/

An interesting combo - a Porsche 911 towing a 1961 Karmann Ghia.  There were no Karmann's last year.  This year there were two - both trailered in.



The Kombi Collection








If you're really looking for a project....  as bad as it looks probably someone could salvage this.









Another rarity - the VW Country Buggy

The Country Buggy was a utility vehicle designed and built by Volkswagen Australia, It was originally an experimental project that was put into production without advising Volkswagen headquarters in Wolfsburg, Germany. When Wolfsburg found out they were not happy and demanded a test vehicle be shipped to Germany at once for study, and ordered production to cease.  The reason why Wolfsburg were so angry was that they had simultaneously been working on a utility vehicle - the Type 182 - and did not appreciate the Australian's undercutting their design, especially as the Australian's had not undertaken Volkswagen's vigorous testing.  Build quality of the Country Buggy is not really up to Volkswagen's standards. http://www.netro.com.au/~vwcc/cb.htm

Only about 840 Country Buggy's were built, making them rather rare. Nevertheless I know of at least another six in Perth alone, many are unrestored. Parts can be hard to find.

The Volkswagen Type 181 utility vehicle. Known as 'The Thing', or the 'Trekker' or the 'Safari', it is basically a modernised version of the Second World War VW Kubelwagen. http://www.type181registry.com/

A nicely preserved Type 3 variant (not a very imaginative name)

1969 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. This car won the Best Karmann Ghia in show.

It's amazing how many uses a Volkswagen chassis and engine can be put to.

VW Buggy and Type 3

VW Manx beach buggy

Herbie the Love Bug

1967 Volkswagen Beetle

Some people really trick out their rides

A very nice 1960s Beetle.  Red is obviously THE colour...

Red....

And more red.  This time a 1954 Oval.

1954 was a very popular year for Beetles. There were at least four 1954s at the show.

This 1953 Type 1 is reputed to be first Volkswagen Beetle sold in Perth (surviving). It is immaculately preserved and very original. It has recently been resprayed. It won the Best Type 1 to 1967 in the Show.

This 1954 Type 1 was up for sale. It was immaculately restored ten years ago and has rarely been used since, doing only 2,800 miles since restoration. It is a gorgeous machine, as these photos demonstrate.









The star of the show in my book is this 1952 Type 1 Export-Standard. The car was one of 200 shipped to Southern Rhodesia in 1952. Possibly because the cars were going to Africa, they were not fitted out as the normal 'export' version with chrome and trim, but were given the standard fittings for the German domestic market. This meant very plain cloth interior panels, minimal instrumentation, wool headliner, and basic steering wheel. To all intents and purposes this is exactly what the Volkswagen as planned in 1938 would have looked like, even down to the original blue-black paint scheme.

There are seven known survivors of this Rhodesian shipment - 4 are in South Africa and 3 are in Australia.





With the Karmann Ghia in the shop for painting, I opted to take the DKW along as an 'affiliate company.' It's a bit of long bow to draw I know, but it was a good discussion point.

To my great surprise I received an 'encouragement' award from the Club president. Very exciting! All up it was a great day and a very successful show I think.

Links to more photos and information - http://www.noh2o.org/viewtopic.php?p=48223#48223 and http://vwclubwa.com/5-events/8531-day-of-the-volkswagen-2013?lang=en&limitstart=0&start=32

Karmann Ghia Project - Panel Work

Last week we dropped the Karmann off at K-Paz Automotive Spraypainting for the bodywork. This was the third time I'd driven the car and to my surprise it actually drove better. The carburetor, which had been a bit problematic, especially in second gear, seemed to be working fine now. Perhaps running it for a while had flushed out whatever gunk was had decided to lodge in there.

The trim and fittings are removed. The last photo of the car in black.

Back from the soda blaster. Not even the same car.

It has obviously had some filler work done on it prior to receiving its black paint job, which wasn't original. I believe the car may actually have been red originally.

Some more work to be done to investigate under the filler to see what the damage is. So far there is no sign of serious damage.

Shelly is still thinking red, but maybe a little darker shade?


Update - December 2013
Here are a series of detailed photos of the underlying condition of the car.

As expected, there was bogged over rust in the bottom of the doors. This is a common problem in Ghias.

Both sills had been replaced at some point -badly. Neither actually line up with the body-line correctly and filler has been used to fill the gaps to make them align.

Bad rust repair in the left and right lower front panels. These will be cut out and replaced with replacement panels. In this picture you can clearly see that the sill has been completely bogged over as it does not line up with the body.

A small spot of rust cut out and new steel welded in. This is a test repair.

A small rust spot above the front vent.

Pleasingly the front has not been damaged in any serious way. There is a very small amount of fill on the outside of the nose to smooth over some minor imperfections.

Another interesting home repair. Where is the torsion bar inspection hole? It was in fact completely bogged over. This will all be cut out a replacement panel installed.

There was major rot in the boot lid. This was apparent even before the paint was stripped. The rot has completely destroyed the bottom half of the lid but the top is in very good condition.

I managed to source a complete boot lid from the Vee Dub Centre in Osborne Park. The top of the lid is partially damaged but the bottom is good. From the two parts we'll get a single good boot.



Part of the colour history of the car - seven layers of paint! The car was originally turquoise and has been repainted numerous times, blue, red, silver and black. This is the first time however that the car has been stripped back to bare metal.


Link the the next stage of restoration: https://heinkelscooter.blogspot.com/2014/03/vw-karmann-ghia-progress.html