There are still a few VW Type 3 Squarebacks plying the streets here. More specifically, they seem to favor plying Pearl Street, as when I shot this one recently, I remembered another one I shot on the same street a year or so ago. How come I never used that Outtake?
Oh right…it’s out of focus. This green Squareback was piloted by a young woman regularly in the downtown area, and I finally thought I’d caught up with her (on foot). No such luck….What a distinctive putt-putting these make at idle when they’re not in quite right tune. And the yellow one was driven by a youngish woman too.
I like these! I like the fastback body better, and I like the Europe-only notchback even better than that! And I like a Karmann-Ghia even better than that! I don’t like Beetles though. I’m a weirdo, I guess.
Sometimes I hate living in Michigan…you rarely see these old cars out being used as transportation, because they all rusted into the ground.
My sense is that among VW enthusiasts being a weirdo is OKAY!
Encouraged, even.
Pretty much. We are all a bit weird. They’re weird cars. We tend to just embrace the weirdness.
Are those Volvo hubcaps in the first pic?
Good eye! Here’s the close up. Would a Volvo hubcap fit? Can you make this one out?
That looks like one of the newer aftermarket hubcaps with the Wolfsburg crest.
That’s what I thought about the crest in the center, but have not seen this style of cap before. Nice.
These were SO common in Davis, CA… I can remember my dad explaining the difference between the fastback and square back on a bike ride to McDonald’s one morning. Sure enough, we saw one of each on the way! We even spotted a 411 on that ride.
I love these!
Note to self: Visit Eugene at some point.
My heart lies with the beetles and the Buses but I do miss my Type 3s, the Squarebacks are my favorite. It is definitely on my list of future rides.
I totally ignored these as a kid,I liked beetles and KGs.The only one I recall was orange and driven by a painter and decorator
Very very few surviving squarebacks here they never were as popular as beetles and suffer the same problems once on the highway.
Looks like a Shantung yellow ’71. I didn’t have much experience with these, focusing on the Beetle instead. I just wonder how hard it is to keep these running, is it easy to get parts for the Bosch fuel injection? Is this D-Jetronic as reliable as the later L? I do see these once in a while, but haven’t seen a Fastback since I can’t remember when.
It’s a good system. The problem was that most mechanics had no idea how to work on it back then and just threw parts at it and didn’t know how to tune it properly.
Most of them have been converted to dual carburetors now anyway. Either the stock Solex carbs of the pre-injection cars or Webers. 34 ICTs work nicely.
Just a side note, the car I drove in high school was a 1971 Beetle, in Shantung Yellow. It was a 1971 only color.
I know through experience that the L jetronic was very reliable and I hope the D serves just as well. I also saw that when a car didn’t run right some started to blame the fuel injection when they should have checked other “conventional” areas first.
My first car was a new ’71 Super Beetle. I didn’t get Shantung Yellow, but I remember at the end of the model year there was a Beetle in the showroom with this color and cork cloth interior. I was surprised at how rich it looked. I don’t recall another fitted this way; I think most Shantung Yellow cars had black leatherette.
My ’71 was a standard Beetle and had the tan interior. The seats had been recovered in cloth but it wasn’t original style. The interior panels were the originals and it didn’t have carpet instead it was all rubber mats but had the look and texture of the square weave carpet.
Purely opinion here, but… I always felt the Squarebacks were amongst the friendliest looking cars on the road. Right up there with the Beetle. It was hard to imagine the owner being a difficult person.
My father owned two of them. You might feel differently if you had met him.
Haha, That’s why I I prefaced my comment with ‘pure opinion’ largely based upon observation of the owners I knew. They are friendly looking cars…
Yes, all kidding (or whining) aside, they are likeable looking—particularly the earlier version with the more rounded front hood—er, trunk.
I hate these. Maybe because, unlike the Beetle, it’s hell to work on the engine. And its early analog Bosch injection goes bad as it ages. Pulled the engine just to reach and replace the injectors, went through hell and bleeding finger flesh getting its big rubber air duct to go back in between engine and bodywork, and after all that it still ran like crap.
A rear engine station wagon? Are you joking???
A rear engine station wagon? Are you joking???
Hey, it was by far the most practical body of all the rear engine VWs: two “trunks” instead of almost none 🙂
If it made sense it wouldn’t be a Volkswagen!
and this is coming from a complete VW gearhead haha.
I often wonder why the Type 3 and Type 4 were not a real big seller for VW. Were they priced to expensive compared to the Beetle? Seems that those cars with its more modern looking appearance and more room (and you could get a 4 door sedan with the Type 4) would have sold like hotcakes over the Nazi Shitbox(aka the Beetle) which by the late 1960’s was pretty dated and quite crude
The Type 3 actually sold fairly well. Nothing compared to Beetle numbers but few cars approach Beetle numbers even today.
The Type 4 was too expensive, too slow and too ugly. They do drive rather nicely though.
A ’69 Squareback was 38% more than a Beetle. For the same/similar price, there were a lot of roomier American compact and mid-size cars available. The Type 3 sold to VW lovers who wanted to stay with the brand, but were ready to pay more for a bit more room and power. The Beetle was cheap, and a known commodity.
The Type 4? Utter disaster. Deadly Sin, in Europe and the US. https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/curbside-classic-1974-vw-412-vws-deadly-sin-1/
Having a great deal of experience with riding in a Squareback, I find it impossible to join in the chorus of praise for these cars. They are without doubt the most unpleasant car to ride in that I have ever experienced, including the Soviet Union’s worst (Zaporozhets, Moskvich). I rode in the back of one on a regular basis for at least 5 years in a school carpool, and the awful racket from the engine, almost complete lack of ventilation, non-opening rear windows, and rock-hard rear seat that was cramped even for a 12 year old resulted in an automatic headache every time that I rode in it. It made my family’s bare-bones, no-A/C 1972 Nova coupe seem like a limousine in comparison.
The owner was the VW fanatic mother of a friend, so I can understand why she bought it and liked it – it was a major step up in size and utility from a Beetle, and it offered the same virtues of build quality and solidity. I cannot believe that there were any other good reasons to buy it, though.
I’ve had a Notchback and two Squarebacks but this ’68 is the one I miss. It was super solid and the original interior was super nice. Even the dash pad had no cracks.
The moment I saw it leaving the driveway when I was 19 I looked at my dad and said “I think I’m going to regret this.”
My Shantung Yellow ’71 Beetle is in the background.
My best friend in High School had one, a red ’71 that his mother had bought new. This was in the mid to later ’80’s. He flogged that thing mercilessly and even then it was painfully slow. Didn’t handle too well either or have much in the way of braking but it almost never let him down, I only recall one instance where it failed to start over about a four year period. His family was a VW family, they had a ’77 Camper in lime green with the plaid interior in flawless condition, an ’84 Diesel Rabbit, and then bought an ’87 Passat Wagon. He eventually replaced the Squareback with an ’86 GTI which is where I got the idea that I wanted one as well (and did a few years later).
My parents had a yellow station wagon just like the one in the first photo, a 1972 model that they had picked up at Wolfsburg, driven through Denmark to visit relatives, then shipped home. We met them once in Nevada, and Pop wanted to show us some of the hills he’d prospected for gold back in the 1930’s and 1940’s. A good many of the desert tracks were still there, and the only problem was when we encountered an unexpected stream. Yes, a stream, in Nevada, with water in it. (Thinking about it later, it was probably runoff from some mine.) The terrain was somewhat abrupt, and the only way we made it across was for my wife, my mother, and me to get out and help push while Pop drove it across. We made it, but at the cost of denting the sheet metal under the rear bumper. My mother, who thought of it as her car, was noticeably short for the rest of the afternoon.
I drove Type 3 VWs almost exclusively from 1966 to 1981. The first was a 1965 Variant S, with twin carbs, that my Dad bought from the original owner with 6k miles. The original owner was an airline pilot and had purchased the car in Amsterdam and had it air shipped to New York. I learned how to drive in this car, took my driver’s license test in it, dated many girls in it, slept in it…etc. A lot of memories. The second was a 1971 Fastback that my wife and I bought the first year we were married. The car was a reddish orange with black interior and it had 10k miles when we bought it from the Forest Hills, NY VW dealer. We made many long distance trips on this one and even brought home all three of my children from the hospital in it. Again many memories.
These cars were far from perfect but they suited my purposes at the time and to criticize them today would be like criticizing a close family member to someone outside the family.
My dad bought a new 71 dark blue Squareback. We we’re living in Turkey at the time, and the quality of regular gas was bad, and ruined the fuel injection when the car was less than a year old. My dad learned the hard way that super gas was the better way to go in Turkey. Other than that, my dad enjoyed driving it much better than the 67 VW bus he had previously. It was a sports car in comparison , and good in the snow, especially with 5 of us aboard. During a ski trip in Austria we passed a front drive Renault stuck going up a hill in the snow. A few years later I learned to drive in that Squareback. Shifting the gears and working the clutch came naturally to me. My brother had a harder time with it. A few years later I had a Ford Pinto, which was much lower . Then I had the occasion to drive the Squareback again, which felt like a truck in comparison, with comfortable higher seating position.