My 1971 Volkswagen Convertible

The year was 1976. I was 19 years old and had just completed my first year of college. I was driving a 1967 Oldsmobile Delta 88. It was a big old tank with a 455 engine. It got about 10 miles to the gallon. My dad had bought it used a few years before so that my mother would have transportation back and forth to work. They gave it to me and said I could finish wearing it out. In the winter time I had to take the breather off, stick a screw driver in the carburetor to hold the choke open in order to start it. By spring I had grown tired of it and began looking for a new set of wheels. I found what I wanted in an orange 1971 Volkswagen convertible. There were a lot of VW Beetles around but there were not many convertibles and I thought they looked stylish. I reasoned that I could increase my gas mileage 3 fold and be cool all at the same time.

I bought it from a sassy little beautician who was a friend of mine but who would not negotiate very much on the price. She would not budge below $1300. I am sure she could tell that I wanted it. So I wrote her a check and off I drove in my orange Volkswagen convertible. I now had a vehicle I wanted to show off. It was a fun car to drive. You did not want to lug it, so in order to drive it right you had to wind it all the way out before changing gears. Those cars had a distinctive purr to them so people who knew you could always tell when you were coming. The cars were noisy. A friend of mine described it this way: “When I ride with you I feel like I have the motor to my grandmother’s wringer washer in my hip pocket”. There was no comfort to be found in a Volkswagen Beetle. You felt everything on the road. I drove it 750 miles one day and believe me when the day was over I knew I had been on a journey.

I am not sure what really attracted me to the car. Maybe it was the fact that it was a convertible. I did utilize that facet of the car quite a bit, especially when I was in college. My friends and I were even known to put the top down on a winter day and drive around campus in it. The car was quite a novelty. It was sometimes a little temperamental and had to be tuned up often but by and large owning and driving it was an enjoyable experience.

I owned the car for seven years. I drove it the rest of the way through college. I drove it to Kansas City, MO when I went to seminary. During that time I made several 600 mile trips between Kansas City and Georgetown, KY. Many of those trips were made at night after I had already gone to class and driven a school bus for 4 hours that day. I drove it back and forth to the places I was preaching in my seminary churches. During the course of the seven years I put well over 100,000 miles on the car in addition to the 45-50,000 that was on it when I got it. As most any VW Beetle driver would tell you, over that much time and that many miles you are going to have to overhaul the engine which I did. I also overhauled the transmission and had a new cover put on the top. I took my wife out on our first date in that car. Even though she was not a lover of VW Beetles she agreed to marry me anyway. It might be worth noting that she now drives a 2010 VW Jetta and likes that just fine.

By 1983 I was growing tired of the car. I began to think about selling it. It was around that time that my wife and I drove it to Northern Missouri (yes Northern should be capitalized) where I was preaching during the last year of seminary. It was Memorial Day weekend and it was late, close to midnight. I am driving south on I-35 when the light comes on telling me the car is overheating. It is an air cooled engine and when the light comes on you need to stop soon. You cannot limp along to the next exit because by that time you will have generated enough heat to warp the aluminum heads and perhaps do some serious damage to the engine. I pull over and stop not knowing what I am going to do. I have a flash light so I open up the engine compartment at the back of the car and I inspect and discover the problem. The pulley which turns the only belt and of course turns the fan which cools the engine is loose.  My memory is not real clear here but as I recall the pulley is made in two pieces, slips over a shaft, and is held tight and together with a nut and washer. The threads have striped on the shaft and thus there is not enough tension to keep the pulley together and tight so that it can move the belt. I am thinking that if I had another nut, the original nut could serve as a lock nut and I might get it tight enough so that I can limp home. But I do not have another nut and the only tools I have with me are a screwdriver and an 8 inch adjustable wrench. It is two miles to the next exit and there is nothing there and I know that it is 20 miles to an exit that has a station but it is Sunday night on a holiday weekend. And how do I get there? These thoughts are racing through my mind when a van pulls over. They ask if they can help, we discuss the problem and they offer to give us a ride to the station and back. The folks in the van are a little bit strange and I am not sure I trust them. But we are stuck on the side of the road at midnight and we decide to take them up on the offer. They give us a ride to the station where a kid is working who knows very little about mechanics but does help me find a nut that might work. The folks give us a ride back and in the middle of the night and with the light of their headlights I put the old nut and the new nut on the shaft tighten them down with an 8 inch adjustable wrench and hope. I thank the good folks in the van and by their help and the grace of God make it home. I learned a valuable lesson that night that I have pondered for almost 30 years. I learned that there are a lot of strange people in the world. Most of them are probably good people who are willing to help. If we can learn to look past their strangeness they can be a blessing to our lives.

I took the car to a mechanic the next day who fixed the problem correctly. But I decided after that experience that it was time that the orange Volkswagen convertible and I part ways. Within a week or so I placed an ad in the paper – FOR SALE: 1971 Volkswagen convertible. I got a few calls and within a few days along came a guy who was buying his daughter her first car. I could tell in her eyes it was just what she wanted. We haggled a little bit on the price. He offered me $2,000 and I said OK. He pays me and his daughter drives off in the car proud and smiling. I watch her drive away and I think to myself I hope she enjoys that car as much as I have.