Flash! Doodad!… It’ll drive everyone of us!

by Nathan Stout (of AccordingToWhim.com)

This is the tale of the new VW Beetle I purchased recently. As you know (or don’t) I bought a 1971 Volkswagen Super Beetle last year (or the year before, I can’t remember). It is a banana yellow bug and my wife calls it the littlest short bus. I have made some repairs to it and got it pass inspection (somehow) and drove it a total of once to work. That inspection is out of date again (oh goodie)… but that’s another story.

One day I was at work and I went to the cafeteria for lunch. One of the women that work in cafeteria was showing pictures of her ‘new toy’ on her cell phone. It was some hideous big wheeled truck that her and her husband traded two other cars for. I happened to mention that I had a toy car and it was a Super Beetle. She says at that point. ‘We have one of those’. I asked if it was for sale and she said yes, her husband was trying to sell it. As the British say: ‘Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs’ (that means I am speechless). I was instantly interested and asked her to talk to her husband about it and get back to me.

The next day she shows me her cell phone and the pictures of the 1970 Beetle (not super). It is a lighter shade of yellow and it has this sort of ZZ Top design going down the side. It looks really nice (at least on the little screen of the phone). She tells me he wants $3,500 for it. That’s a bit much for me but I am still interested. She told me that they had traded some supped up Chevy Nova for it. Since they appear to do trades so much I thought I might have a trade of my own to do…

A few days later I came back to her with a counter offer. I offered $2,000 which I had on hand (from my May Comicon and selling $1,000 worth of Silver when it hit $50 an ounce) and my Super Beetle. I paid $1,500 for the Super so I saw this trade equaling $3,500. I have put money into the Super Beetle so it was a good deal for them. Well after she called and talked to her husband she told me they didn’t want to trade. They were firm at $3,500. I couldn’t seem to get that kind of money together so I passed.

The next couple of week passed and she told me one day they decided to put new tires on it and sell it on Craigslist. The next week they did but no one would buy it. I don’t know how many people called and inquired but they had very little interest in the price they needed to make. Someone even tried the old ‘PayPal ship me the car scam’ but she was too clever for that.

Another couple of weeks passed and I inquired as to the sales status of the car (as usual) and she told me her husband wanted to work out a deal with me. He wanted me to come look at the car and if getting the total money together was an issue, he would work with me by letting me pay the balance out. Needless to say I jumped at the offer.

I took my wife out to Briar (South of Boyd) and we took a look at the car. It was pretty much as it looked in the photos. The paint job and the condition of the body was pretty nice. There were a few rust spots but that was to be expected. My Super has a bazillion spots on it and the body is rough so this VW was quite nice in comparison. I inspected it all over (since I have now acquired a lot of Beetle experience with Super) so I knew the trouble spots to look for. Most everything looked good on the car. It was hot-rodded a little over the years (before this guy had it) so I knew that if I was going to get it I would put some stuff back to stock on it. I am not big on the hot-rodded versions but the more traditional look (and sound). The car has one of those big ass tail pipes that blow out your ear drums and I knew that was going to have to go soon. I drove it a bit (the racing shifter took some getting used to) and liked what I saw. I agreed on the price of $2,000 up front and paying out the rest as I could get it to him. They are really nice people and I knew I was getting a straight forward deal.

I drove it home and quickly got a stock muffler for it (after vacuuming the crap out of it). After I get the muffler done and start saving up I am going to get it painted black. The infection control nurse for the hospital’s husband paints cars and is interested in getting some work from me. The paint job looks fine and all but I really want black.

Keep an eye out for future tales of the new VW here on our daily blog!

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