Junior Senior – two ’51 Split Bugs

Breathe the word Splitdog at any Californian VW show and most people will point you in the right direction, and that direction will be towards Jim Greenfield and his dad, Jim Greenfield Snr. If people don't know Jim and Jim Jnr, they will certainly know their cars. Both Jims travel to all the shows and enjoy displaying their VWs together wherever possible, but as Jim Snr is now 78 years old he finds driving his a little more difficult these days.
Jim Jnr's car is easily recognisable from his registration, which is also what people know him as: Splitdog. Jim Jnr has been into VWs since high school, when all his friends drove VWs. That was 1977 and Beetles were the car of choice for high school kids. It was in '77, at the age of 16, that Pops bought Jim his Split Bug for $1,150. Without Dad's purchase Jim doesn't know if he would have taken the dark road to the VW world.
Being the true gentleman that I am, I think we should start with Jim Snr, or Pops', Beetle. To be honest, both Beetles are stunning cars and it was hard to decide where to start but I suppose since it was Dad who started all this VW mania off in the Greenfield household, then it's only fair that his car is the starting point.
The 1951 Split Beetle was purchased in 1979 as an unfinished project. The purchase price of $5,000 was high in comparison to Jim's $1,150 Split but Pops' came with enough spare parts to finish both cars, so it was a real bargain.
The Beetle was manufactured on April 10th, 1951 bearing the chassis number is 243-486. According to records, the Wolfsburg Crest was introduced from chassis number 243-781 while from chassis number 244-668 VW introduced the chrome around the front windshield. They list the ‘crotch coolers' and door switches as added on April 13th so it has all the details and features of a 1950 Beetle rather than a 1951 model and is therefore just missing the critical improvements. Interestingly, it has indentations in the door post where VW was going to put in the door switches a few days after Pops' Beetle rolled off the production line.

For the full story on this car make sure you pick up a copy of the October 2009 issue of VolksWorld

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