I was young and strong and the car was light. Being a manual, it could be push-started. Near the end of the car's life, the starter failed on it, and I didn’t have the money to fix it.
#RUSTY LAKE HOTEL BEETLE WINDOWS#
I stayed in the slow lane and drove with the windows open. I had to drive on the highway to get to my summer job, but if I got going more than 45 miles per hour, an acrid smell would creep in and the cabin would begin to fill with smoke. Texting and coffee on the go had not been invented yet. Winter driving was an exercise in acrobatics, steering, shifting, scraping. I kept an ice scraper handy for the inside of the window and blankets for the passengers. So, in winter, there would be days when the front windshield never got totally defrosted and the interior never got warm. When the engine got warmed up, some heat would be directed by convection onto the windshield from these vents but not with a fan.
Of small vents at the side of the windshield. The defrosting system for the front window, and heat for the whole car, was a couple
My model didn't have a heater fan either. Very rudimentary, but it saved me numerous times. The way you kept track of your gas was roughly by noting how long it had been since your last fill up, and if the engine started to sputter, there was a lever on the floor that you would kick over with your foot while driving and it gave you a final gallon of gas to get you to a gas station. It didn't work-there was no gas gauge to begin with. Volkswagen option packages were minimalist. They had rusted away from the front fenders, and the front fenders were partially rusted away from the body, so that when I got going at any speed, the air would pool under the fenders, and make them “Thwap” against the side of the car. So rusty, that the running boards, yes, it had running boards, were unsafe to step on.
#RUSTY LAKE HOTEL BEETLE MANUAL#
It had a manual transmission, which I still enjoy driving to this day. Much of what made it special is looked at through the rear-view mirror of my life.
A quart of oil every 100 miles or so kept the engine running. It was a faded steel-blue colour and had a small 1200-cc engine with minimal horsepower. I knew some people, and was able to get it mechanically certified, although in retrospect, it really wasn’t roadworthy. I owned it in 1973, so, although only ten years old, my 1963 Volkswagen Beetle was a rusted clunker by the time I bought it for $100. In 2019, Volkswagen announced that sadly, it was discontinuing the VW Beetle, after about 80 years in production.