French Lessons – ’73 Beetle

It's official, I'm turning into a girl. First, it was Nicolas Carr-Forster's gorgeous Standard at Stanford Hall, now it's David's car here. It's all about the colour. Under the glorious skies that shone down on EBI last year this car stood out like a sore thumb - a lovely, metallic green sore thumb that instantly reminded us of DKP member Art Gutierrez's well known Cal Look sedan. David wasn't with the car at the time, but we waited around until he was as we had to have this car for the magazine. In the meantime, we got in for a closer look.

What you may not have immediately noticed, and we'll admit we didn't either when we first laid eyes on the car, was its vintage. The more we looked, the more we liked it, but there were a few things that had us scratching our heads. The door handles, for example, and the fuel filler flap. The rear view mirror didn't add up - it had plastic window winders not chrome ones, yet it had a late-'60's style dash and no through-flow ventilation... What was going on here? Suddenly it dawned on us - without David we were unable to pinpoint the exact year, but the car had to be what we fondly refer to as a late early look, but one which had been given the appearance of a US-spec '67. When we did finally catch up with David, we discovered the car is actually a '73L (denoting the ‘luxury' package), and this is its second restoration and rebuild since he's owned it.

Like last month's cover car, this is also David's first ever car, having been given to him by his parents when he passed his driving test 15 years ago. As is often the case though, our excited young Frenchman promptly then stacked it. David: "I gave it a little upgrade and cruised with it but only for a short time - just because you have a licence doesn't give you super powers to drive like Schumy!"

"That was the first break in my VW life," he continues with a grin. "After two years driving a Golf, I found a new base car without papers, which I could use to rebuild my old Beetle. I rebuilt the whole car - chassis, brakes, bodywork and a little 1641cc motor - styled it as a Resto Cal, painted it purple and drove it like that for three years."

For the full story on this car make sure you pick up a copy of the June 2010 issue of VolksWorld

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