From the time I was very small I used to sit on the front stoop and watch the cars go by. By age five I could reliably tell you the make, model, and year of pretty much every American car made after about 1965. By the time I was a teenager, I’d expanded my knowledge back to about 1955. Foreign cars were another matter, if for no other reason that they were unusual during my 1970s kidhood. Except for Beetles, of course, but those were vexing because they changed so seldom. When a Beetle rolled by, I looked at windows, headlights, and tail lights, and tried to sort the car into a broad model-year bucket.
On this summer day in 1982, I was about 15. I had spooled a roll of film into an old camera I had bought, a Kodak Duaflex II, and had been out taking photos with it. I’ve even shared a photo from that roll here before: this 1967 Mustang. I wondered what would happen if I tried to photograph a moving car. So I sat on the stoop and captured this Beetle. Based on the side windows, it’s from after 1964. Could that be a curved windshield, marking this as from 1973 or later? The other details are too blurred by motion to pinpoint it any better. 1960s Beetles were thin on the ground by 1982 in the rust-prone part of the country where I lived, so I’m saying this one is from the 1970s.
The sharply curved windshield makes it look like a post 1973 Super Beetle to me but it’s blurry so….
-Nate
It’s screaming “Super Beetle”….(the bulging front end is the give-away).
+1
Hard to tell, kind of looks like chrome on top of the turn signals, early 70’s?
Hard to tell, but it appears to have the heavier bumpers with the black center part, making it 1974 or later.
I think Paul nailed it, a Super, in Marina Blue.
Rubber bumper inserts were standard on the Super from the beginning, 1971, but the larger curved windshield wasn’t introduced until 1973.
Nice photo indeed and this could pass for 2015. When I first arrived in South Central Los Angeles from the Southern tier in 2012 I practically wore my neck out trying to look at all the Beetles. Even in Portland there are a good number of Beetles, I must have seen nearly a dozen yesterday from ratty no headlights version to cherry looking straight out of 1965 versions.
I was the same way when I was younger as I could identify cars from the early 50’s up to the early 90’s. Now, everything from Mercedes, BMW and Hyundai look like a Camry. Whatever happened to car stylists?
Jim, like you I could tell many cars in my neighborhood just from the sound of the engine. Of course at that time there were many different kinds of engines in use.
Oh yes. By the time I was a teen I had a pretty good ability to ID a handful of common engines by their sounds. That was fun.
I vote for a Marina Blue ’73 Super. The bumpers on the ’74 are higher and larger, and would be evident even on a blurred image. I can even hear the whistling cheap aftermarket tailpipes.
Love seeing old photos like this.
1302 Beetle by the look of it a teacher at my school had the identical car Aussie built it rusted away around him in 3 years from new the assembly quality was attrocious compared the older NZ built models.
The summer of 1976 was extremely hot,
My best friends mom had a baby blue Käfer as shown in the picture above. The car had black vinyl seats and when you opened the door, the interior would have been so heated up by the sun, the plastic smell would almost make you pass out.
Once we got inside and sat down on the rear bench, we started to scream, since we were wearing shorts so that our naked little legs got burned by the sizzling vinyl.
Then we drove to the local swimming pool where we were living it up for the rest of the day.
Such happy times 😉
It should be this vintage (1975)
Back then I had a battery-powered toy Beetle in exactly that color. It had a little safety rod (in the “floor pan”) to prevent it from falling off a table etc. when driving. Furthermore, real smoke was coming from its exhausts !
Real smoke, Johannes? What have you been smoking? Have you traveled to Amsterdam lately?
Yes, it was smoking. Typical hippy-vehicle, after all.
My brother had an orange one. Also smoking.
Haha !! Here are your Smoking Volkswagens from the seventies !
“Large scale tinplate battery operated Volkswagen Beetle model with detailed tinprinted interior. Produced in various colourways, light blue, orange, red etc with plated parts. ‘Stop and Go’ mystery action, lighted engine compartment and smoke emitting exhaust, 27cm.”
(ASC Toys)
funny – i never saw those. what was the smoke made of???
Oh, just harmless natural materials. Grass, I guess.
did your school marks get considerably better or worse after playing with your beetle and inhaling the harmless “grass” ? 😉
Playing with my smoking beetle didn’t affect my school marks. I was only playing with it at home.