(first posted 5/22/2016. I forgot to rerun this last Sunday; my apologies) In early 1967 things were humming along better than ever. Shell Oil was a great place to work. Never again in my long career would I have as nice an office as I did when I first started working there. Carpeting, wooden desk, one office mate, carafe of water and drinking classes cleaned and filled every morning. As far as physical working conditions were concerned, it would be downhill from this point forward, even when I was an owner/partner in our own company.
Annie was working on her first Masters degree at Adelphi, driving the Comet and tolerating it, and was pregnant. The fact that we would soon be three indicated that my income would need to be tweaked soon and the little one bedroom cottage, while OK for a bit more, would eventually need to be upgraded to a two bedroom “something”.
Changes were coming.
IBM Mainframe programming at Shell was right up my alley. I was heavily into Cobol programming, first from specifications developed by superiors, then from my own specifications developed from end user interviews. Cobol was an English based programming language, rather wordy and maybe a bit tedious to code, but for me it rewarded all of the neatness and organized anal-retentive obsessive-compulsive tendencies that were shallowly buried in my psyche.
Doc (my father) was also commuting from Rockville Centre to Manhattan, and while the Long Island Railroad was usually OK, there were on-time issues with their aging rail cars (especially in the winter) and the monthly fares that rose with troublesome regularity. Doc and I determined it would be financially prudent to share a small efficient car between the two of us to drive to Queens where we could pick up the subway to Manhattan. Additionally, one of us would have an extra car on the weekends.
The subway fare had risen from 15 to 20 cents a ride. Yes, I know, outrageous. The NYC Transit Authority was run by a bunch of pinko commie bed wetter railroad robber barons. But the shared scenario car made sense so in early 1967 we bought a lightly used 1964 VW Beetle.
When first planning this COAL I thought most CCers would be so familiar with the Beetle that explaining its idiosyncrasies would be unnecessary. But times have changed. Once ubiquitous, these cars are now rare and treasured memory evoking antiques. If one is found today in a parking lot there is usually a group of people standing around it asking questions, taking photos, and peeking through the windows as if it were a Lamborghini Miura.
Also gathered around a Beetle these days would be a bunch of high belted geezers pointing out the tiny details that separated each model year from its predecessor, and then fondly reminiscing between themselves about the good old…
First some specs. The 1964 Type 1 Beetle had a 72.7 cu. in (1.2 L) air-cooled flat boxer style four cylinder engine. Most Subarus also use a flat boxer design but those are water-cooled, much bigger, and less noisy. However, once in a while I have heard a slightly familiar note when a 4 cylinder Subaru with a loud muffler accelerates past me.
The 1964 VW made 40 horsepower at 3900 RPM and provided 64 lbs.-ft. of torque at 2400 RPM. VW said it could get to 72 MPH and run at that speed all day. This was the very definition of an under-stressed engine. I think the 72 MPH number was optimistic. Maybe 65 with the gas pedal all the way down was more realistic. With no head wind. On level ground. Driver only, no passengers.
The rear mounted flat four air-cooled engine gave the bug a distinctive and loud clattering sound, and was easy to access and work on. Look at that distributor cap and singular fan belt.
Some people can even change the fan belt while the engine is running. I always turned the motor off when working on it, but what did I know?
Old VW bugs did not have oil filters. There was a removable screen on the bottom of the crankcase that was supposed to be cleaned with oil changes. There was also a simple drain bolt in the center of the screen’s round base.
The VW’s interior had everything one needed to motor along, and not much else. That little ivory dial on the floor in front of the passenger seat was the heater control. Twist it one way and warm air from the engine’s cowling was pushed by the engine fan through long heater boxes on each side of the car to little heater doors on the floor and little vents at the bottom corners of the windshield.
The faster the engine spun, the greater the flow of heated air to the interior. That’s why so many Beetle drives kept it in 3rd gear in the winter. And even in 3rd, gloves and warm socks were usually needed. Annie drove the Beetle rarely and never in cold weather. This made the Comet look good.
Doc and I were impressed with the build quality of the Beetle. After years of driving big American iron, this little jewel of a machine spoke to the neatnik in us both. It worked well, did its job competently (albeit noisily), and left off all of the excess glitz and glamour (and power and comfort) of our other cars.
Each workday morning, I’d wait to hear the clatter of the VW as Doc backed into the long driveway that led to Annie’s and my little cottage. Doc drove us in to the Queens Courthouse parking lot and I usually drove on the return run home.
One icy morning we got a lesson in rear engine driving dynamics. Seeing some ice on the road, Doc slowly and carefully made a right turn onto the downhill road leading to the parking lot and the little bug first made that turn and then continued into a slow gentle 360 degree rotation down the icy hill ending up pointing in the right direction and not hitting anything. We sat there together with the engine clattering, looked at each other, and then wordlessly drove into the garage.
Lesson learned.
The trunk was in the front, a spare fan belt was kept in front of the spare tire, and a windshield washer bottle/device that ran on compressed air was under the spare tire. The washer bottle in our VW would not hold compressed air so we kept a water pistol filled with Windex in the little door map holder.
The gas filler was also in the trunk on the driver’s side; it is just visible at the tire’s one o-clock position.
The windshield was right on top of the dashboard and there was a grab handle in front of the passenger seat. As you can see here, a driver had no problems spraying the outside of the windshield with a Windex filled water pistol.
As minimal as the bug seemed then, and especially from the perspective of today’s offerings, it was much better built and more reliable than the competing products from Renault and Fiat. That’s why VW sold more than 21 million of them.
Back at work, I was becoming the greatest Cobol programmer in the world country Shell’s small-dealer and TBA (tires, batteries, and accessories) programming group. I had also discovered a software package called Mark IV. At first Mark IV appeared to be a quick and dirty information storage and retrieval tool, but as its vendor Informatics added features to it, it became a very powerful software package that I thought had great potential.
Like the Ferrari at Adelphi, the Mark IV system would also change my life. Just not right away.
I was getting raises at Shell but new college grads were coming in at higher wages. With a baby boy bouncing around the cottage we were starting to look for bigger places. In early 1969 my rocket scientist brother Jeff (literally, he worked on the F-14 Phoenix missile system) got me an interview at Grumman Aerospace in Bethpage. As I was a commercial (i.e., business) programmer, I though the interviews would be with the Grumman commercial MIS people. But no, my interviewers were from the engineering side of the fence and they listened to my brave and exaggerated tales of Cobol and Mark IV expertise and accomplishments with interest and devious plans. They competed with the Grumman commercial programming group and thought they could do that type of work faster and better.
If I passed a regular secret level security check (piece of cake) and physical (not sure why but still another piece of cake), I was in at Grumman at a much better salary. Done, done, and done.
I would need a car for the Grumman job, so I offered the VW to Doc, planning to get one myself, but he said no, so I bought his share of the VW. Doc may have loved the little bug but my mother thought it was a poor person’s car and she couldn’t wait to see it gone. Doc drove the 61 Pontiac Ventura (see Note-1) to the subway and Mom bought (and this was really a bad move) a well used off-lease red(ish) four-suicide-door, padded roof, landau trimmed T-Bird. I think it was a 1968 model; not sure.
That T-bird was definitely not a poor person’s car, but pity the poor person who worked on it.
Note-1: For 56 years I though the color of Doc’s 1961 Pontiac Ventura was called Honduras Maroon. But just recently fellow CCer JPCavanaugh revealed that it was really call Coronado Red. Honduras Maroon is a beautiful name; Coronado Red sounds like a California stripper. Thanks JP!
Note-2: 10 years later when I was visiting my parents who were now living in Miami, I volunteered to change the plugs and a small two inch leaking hose on that brick colored T-Bird. Doc was getting on in years (I’m older now than he was then) so this was a job best left to the young and handsome flexible. In the heat and humidity of Miami, I spent hours bent over the T-Bird on that job and that was the beginning of what would become an on-again off-again series of painful back problems that still crop up to this day.
In early March 1969 I started at Grumman Aerospace, which US Navy pilots fondly called Grumman Iron Works because its planes took a lot of flak and bullets and abuse (ever see an arrested carrier landing?).
Grumman Bethpage Long Island NY facility
This COAL (lets call it 5 counting the intro) runs from 1967 to 1972. COAL-6 goes back to 1967 and runs to about 1975, and COAL-7 starts in 1972 and runs to, oh maybe 1974. While Paul says every car has a story, sometime they’re telling those stories all at the same time.
Back to early 1969, the drive to Grumman was 15 miles each way. Once there, I spent a lot of time driving the VW all over the Bethpage facility visiting engineering customers and documenting what they wanted my computer programs to do.
There were a lot of VW type 1 Beetles and Type 2 micro-buses at Grumman. Aviation engineers really liked the design, functionality, and minimization of these air cooled VWs.
As this is a car site and not a Navy or NASA site, I’ll limit this section to two of the more interesting and well-known projects that the Beetle took me to. These projects ran simultaneously, so they dates are intermingled.
My job was to automate the tracking of engineering drawings. Grumman was under a lot of pressure from congressional committees to keep their defense and NASA programs on schedule. Any project design change had to be documented in a drawing and then stored in an easy to retrieve and report manner. This type of programming was not rocket science.
The two highest priority projects are probably known to most of you, not because you are Grumman history gurus, but because you went to the movies.
The most evocative project of all was the F-14, the Navy fighter made famous in Top Gun.
When I first arrived, this plane had not yet flown. Grumman had to get the first F14 prototype into the air ASAP to provide its supporters in the government and the Navy with good news. This was politics in practice.
On Dec 21, 1970 Grumman employees everywhere were standing in their lunchrooms staring at many small B&W TVs mounted high on the building columns waiting for the first flight of the F-14 out of the Grumman Calverton facility further east on Long Island. The weather was bad and the flight was cut short. Maybe tomorrow.
Nine days later Grumman tried again. It was a crisp cold winter day and the F-14 prototype took off and retracted its landing gear. The lunchroom TVs only showed us the runway ground camera so we waited for the plane to come into view. We did not hear the transmissions from the A6 chase plane observers when they reported something streaming out from the prototype. The F-14, coming back in towards the runway with the wheels down, became visible on our lunchroom TVs. Then everything happened so fast – and yet seemed to move in slow motion too. The plane was near the ground, just above the trees, maybe a mile out, puffs of smoke showed above it (we later learned these were two ejections), and then we all saw the black smoke and flames of a crash.
It was gone.
Someone in the room was saying oh God, oh God, oh God, over and over.
Even if we didn’t really know them personally, we all knew the test pilots Bob Smythe and Bill Miller. They were our heroes. No one spoke; we saw chutes but that didn’t mean much because they ejected at such a low altitude (maybe a 100 feet) and then drifted into the flames and smoke. We waited in silence; no one moved. A voice soon reported over the building PA system that both Bob and Bill were on the ground and OK.
We looked around at each other through tears, but relieved. Thank God. We also wondered, mostly to ourselves, if this was the end of the program. The TVs all went blank and we went back to our desks.
Tomorrow was New Year’s Eve.
If you’re curious, here’s the video, and an article on that first flight. The “drop” tests in the video are memorable; I witnessed a few of them up close (but behind a thick window).
The cause of the first Tomcat’s demise was its lightweight titanium hydraulic lines. Welding titanium was problematic back then; probably still is. Grumman switched to stainless steel hydraulic lines.
Lesson learned. At great expense.
My other hot drawing tracking project was the NASA Apollo program Lunar Module (LM).
The 1995 film Apollo 13 got some details wrong. Ron Howard portrayed the Grumman Apollo 13 workers at NASA as a bunch of white polyester short sleeve shirt pocket protector wearing whiners.
They weren’t whiners.
These people were the best of the best; Grumman engineers built a space ship (the LM) that did exactly what it was designed to do. Perfectly. Six times Grumman LMs landed two US astronauts on the moon and then safely return that crew to the orbiting command module. Six perfect times.
In the case of the seventh LM on the Apollo 13 mission, it did much more than it was designed or intended to do.
The seventh LM saved the lives of all three Apollo 13 crew members by acting as a lifeboat after the Rockwell built command service module (CSM) experienced an explosion in an oxygen tank. The movie was quite accurate about that fact.
There was a rumor that shortly after the Apollo 13 crew returned safely to earth, someone at Grumman sent a bill to Rockwell for “… towing and accommodations for three guests”. It wasn’t me. But I wish I had thought of it.
When the Apollo program was over, NASA awarded the follow-on space shuttle orbiter contract (in which Grumman was competing) to a team made up of Boeing and Rockwell. ROCKWELL?. Did we hear that right?
Later we would learn that the Grumman shuttle orbiter design, while more expensive than the competition, was rated best for technical design. But NASA thought the Rockwell response not only cost less, but also incorporated more quality checks, perhaps based on their autopsy of what caused the Apollo 13 CSM explosion.
Definition of irony: See above.
Back to late 1967, the cottage, and the 1961 Comet. We had a baby son named Chris. More accurately Annie had the baby; back then fathers waited in the waiting room. How things have changed since then. In a future COAL I hope to include some “labor and birthing” details of my second son. Don’t all car web sites have those types of details?
Chris was still in a crib in our bedroom but soon he would warrant his own bedroom. Chris loved to ride and sleep in the back of the VW in the cozy cubby space behind the rear seat. The sound of the transmission under him and the air-cooled motor just behind him with its warm vibrations must have been very soothing.
The blue Comet still ran OK in its pleasant, albeit minimalist manner, but it needed new tires, and brakes, had a loose feeling in the front end, was smoking a little more than before, and looked a bit worn. I had already replaced the battery after it stranded Annie in town, and she wanted something newer, a little bigger (especially the trunk), and more “up-to-date”, meaning power steering and an automatic transmission.
So, a bigger car and a bigger home were in order.
Well, one thing at a time.
1967 to 1968 was a tumultuous period in this country and things were getting more fearful outside our comfortable life in the little cottage. Soon MLK and RFK would be dead, the Vietnam War would continue to grow at a terrible rate, and the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago would leave many citizens wondering what the hell was going on in the country and the world.
It was as if everyone was going crazy.
Perhaps that’s why the music of that time, no matter how good or romantic, still evokes troublesome feelings and memories.
Back soon.
That last ad of the Bug with three GIANT suitcases wouldn’t pass the laugh test now. There’s no way you could fit those cases into those spaces! Even with the seat folded down, you couldn’t maneuver them through the doors.
Haha. The big one behind the back seat seems to be flush with the outer bodywork!
The VW bug brings back memories. I had a 62 back when I was a teenager. I used it to deliver newspapers. The Sunday papers were huge with ads, and were stacked up to the ceiling . I could get 2 stacks behind the back seat, 3 stacks on the back seat, 2 stacks on the back floor, One short stack on the front passenger seat so I could see out, and one small stack in front of that on the floor, and a few more in the shallow front trunk. The poor thing was overloaded, and the rear wheels which were attached to swing axles would tilt in. The car would barely go , but as I got through the route it would go a little better after each stop. Another thing I had to remember was to keep the engine running the whole time. If I kept shutting it off and starting it, the 6 volt battery would drain fast, and wouldn’t get a chance to recharge.
The door opens W-I-D-E. and the back of the front seat folds forward and the back of the rear bench folds down. Never underestimate a German engineer.——-and the German orthopedic surgeons aren’t bad either!
Wolfgang – I love Beetles, I’ve owned two, but that drawing is hilariously misleading. Part of the suitcases seem to be within the rear wing, above the hood, and also inside the engine compartment!
In 1967 I purchased a 5 foot long TV/Stereo Console from my sister and her husband. By removing the front passenger seat and rear seat bottom from my 1966 VW 1600 we were able to slide the whole thing into the space. I drove it from Elmira, NY to Oxon Hill, MD where my apartment mates helped me remove the stereo. Since the doors opened to a full 90 degrees there was no problem getting the unit into the car.
BINGO!
I was Cubmaster for my boy’s Cub Scout Pack, and often carried two large coolers, tents, sleeping bags, etc. out to the campsite in the “wayback” of my ’64 Beetle. Other campers would often joke that we looked like the clown car at the circus as we unloaded.
Take the passenger seat out, fold the rear and even a Ghia has more space than one would think….
Another great piece! Very much enjoyed the background context of the LIRR, the XP-14 crash, the competition of NAR v G for the SRS project, etc.
Was the little hose one of those that cross-feeds at the water pump (or am I thinking of GM) or one of those little double necked tapered hoses back at the firewall? ( I made a similar terrible experience changing a water pump in frigid Michigan weather on a 1980 Fiesta, where literally, one had to first remove three fine thread bolts from the pulley turning a combination wrench ONLY(!) a 1/4 turn at a time and bare fingers were needed due to the cramped space.)
Your comments on 1968 are right on. Was watching last night What’s My Line, and came across Abe Ribicoff. Interesting fellow held in very high esteem by the WML regulars. Ribicoff fits well into the car and zeitgeist of the story both on being a prime mover of the 1966 Vehicle Safety Act (the days of rigid pole steering columns and barely adequate and questionable sub systems were drawing to a close), as well as nominating the 1968 democratic presidential candidate in Chicago, where Ribicoff chucked his nomination speech and passionately spoke out against the brutality visited on delegates, protesters and newsmen (Google “Ribicoff Dailey”, then Wiki this for the famous Dailey slur on Ribicoff; Go back to Google and poke around to see CBS’ young Dan Rather get punched to the floor, and (in living color) NBC’s John Chancellor and Edwin Newman get surrounded and tangled up in a scrum of Dailey’s goons. Finally, YouTube Dailey’s post fracas speech, all this is a quick but fascinating study in contrasts, and very informative.)
Looking fwd to your next installment, even the arrival of baby #2. To keep it contemporary, maybe you will have to subversively describe it in terms of Starfleet Command (you), Enterprise** (wife), Shuttle (baby), shuttle bay doors (cough, cough). **a shuttle launch in ST TOS has same general proportions and configuration as the traditional lithotomy birth position. (I don’t know if anybody has ever pointed this out before.)
I was only a 5-year-old but in my vague earliest recollections I could still tell the late ’60s were a distinctive time. One of my neighbors painted a huge peace symbol on their chimney. There was that distinct psychedelic poster style that seemed to be everywhere. My older brother told me he and the other students were skipping their classes one day to participate in a “sit-in” protesting the Vietnam War. I couldn’t wait to grow up and be a hippie. Instead, I got the ’70s which were cool in their own way, but very different.
I learned to drive a stick shift in a baby-blue ’68 Beetle and have fond memories of that car even though I could only drive it in the daytime because the headlights were stuck on high beams. But Beetles from a few years earlier look the best, before federal regulations started kicking in.
My first VW was a grey market 1967. It had the much better looking older headlights, but also the six volt electrical system. The 1500cc engine and improved rear suspension did make it go and corner a bit better than the earlier cars it resembled.
There I go, a geezer explaining minutia about old VW’s.
I was 18, just graduated from high school and counting the minutes until I could leave for Erie, PA and college. And deliberately flunking nine credits at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown that summer, just to ensure my parents didn’t suddenly change my college plans at the last second to keep me living at home.
It was real fun living in a Goldwater/Nixon loving, hippie hating household that summer. Dad was cheering on the Chicago police (he felt they went too easy on those damned hippies), and the closest thing to remorse out of him that summer was bursting into my bedroom that July morning virtually yelling that “Bobby Kennedy’s been assassinated!”
It was not a fun time to be 18 with ultra conservative parents, even if I wasn’t politically active (yet). All I knew is that there were two places I didn’t want to be: Johnstown, PA and Vietnam. In that order. Thus my interest in college.
Your & my parents weren’t conservative enough! The 1951 draft deferment for college students (an Executive Order from Truman) was a horrific policy guaranteed to radicalize campuses during a controversial war; it implied that mere high school grads were cannon fodder. And having a draft in the 1st place was a bad idea. But here was the problem: few people other than leftists argued this even though it was historic Anglo-American policy not to have large peacetime armies or conscription.
Trivia: The Confederacy had the first mass conscription in America, much more zealously enforced than the piddling Northern Civil War conscription.
America should’ve heeded John Quincy Adams: “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”
1968: 18, driving a 63 Beetle, about to go off to university, volunteering in RFK’s presidential primary campaign in Indiana (pic attached, May 6, 1968 in Courthouse Square, downtown Fort Wayne, Ethel in the orange and white dress on the right), lots of hopes and dreams among the tragedies and disappointments of the era. Many decades later the current state of presidential politics is very discouraging.
Really enjoying this excellent series and the feedback. It is amazing how one little imported car impacted so many during this era.
I always thought it was a mistake to drive Grumman into what amounted to BK, they were always very strong in aerospace design (arguably far stronger than any of the constituent parts that made up Lockmart).
The story of how Lockheed undermined Grumman by bribing foreign buyers to purchase the inferior F104 over Grumman’s far superior F11F Super Tiger is an epic (and shameful) story of industrial corruption.
F11Fs would still be in service today, with Grumman still independent, if that decision was made on the technical merits.
The F104 protected West Germany and all other NATO members during the cold war when I was in Gymnasium (High School). I witnessed many fly-overs by the Canadian air force that was based in Lahr.
During class in a very quiet moment someone dropped a pencil. The teacher remarked: “And another starfighter crashed!”
I recall those as well from my days just a bit south of you, but was too young to figure out whose Air Force it was exactly. F104 is still one of my favorite plane designs, perhaps that’s why. Lots of low flybys…
And then there was Robert Calvert’s 1974 album “Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters”, a rock opera about the scandal of the selling of the F104G to the German airforce. I don’t think the album was ever released in the US, my copy is a British pressing.
The whole mess was completely ignored here in the states. Deliberately so.
Good one, Wolfgang!
Grumman had a solid track record of fighter design; most of their prop fighters were successful (Bearcat was a favorite of Neil Armstrong), & even the straight-winged Panther racked up good scores in Korea vs. MiGs.
Luftwaffe leader (and wartime ace) Erich Hartmann opposed his superiors over the “Witwenmacher” F-104 & retired because of it. I heard the problem was training (it was unforgiving to fly), but I also think the type was ill-suited to the role the Luftwaffe employed it in. You’d think Europe would’ve gotten a clue from its rapid replacement in the USAF; usually, if they don’t like a type, foreign air forces won’t consider it.
“Unforgiving to fly”- insufficient training- used for purposes it wasn’t designed for….It all boils down to: shit plane. If a plane is forgiving to fly it takes less training to get more pilots up to reasonable skills to use it effectively in more ways.
OTOH, “unforgiving” fighters were often successful because of the very features that made them unforgiving to fly, at least in dogfight situations. The Sopwith Camel would be one example that comes to mind.
It was said of the Camel that it offered the choice of a wood cross, Red Cross, or Victoria Cross. Its predecessor, the Pup, was forgiving & stable enough to be used as a trainer.
Pilot training is very expensive, and cutting corners on this must be tempting to planners.
Interesting stories – I’m looking forward to the next chapter. As a kid in the ’60’s and ’70’s I followed the space program closely when the other kids were playing hockey and baseball (still do) and it was amazing what the people at Grumman and the other companies put together in a short time to get men in space and to the moon. I’ve also cultivated an interest in old cars all my life, and I have a personal interest in the VW Bug from that time period. My first car ride was the trip home from the hospital in our blue ’61 Beetle, and I remember sitting in my dad’s lap at about three years of age “steering” the car while he worked the pedals and gear shift. Looking at the ad, I don’t know how they could fit that many suitcases into a Bug and still have room for passengers. We had a roof rack for ours when we went on longer trips, and with two sisters, we eventually had to get a bigger car with a trunk.
Fantastic story. You forgot to mention that those things felt well buttoned to the road. I rode in one of my uni mates once and was amazed at how well it rode. Acceleration with the 1.6 engine was not that bad. Another friend had one of the later Mexican ones with EFI, much quieter.
Dad had 2 at different times, of which I only partially remember the second. I was brought home from hospital on the first one.
“Chris loved to ride and sleep in the back of the VW in the cozy cubby space behind the rear seat. The sound of the transmission under him and the air-cooled motor just behind him with its warm vibrations must have been very soothing.”
That’s what I did in my uncle’s beetle.
I recall riding back there in a friend or relative’s car on a long trip when I was a very little kid; they even had a thin mattress cut to fit. I don’t recall the car being a Beetle but it probably was. I thought it was so cool and wondered why other cars didn’t have a little sleeping compartment behind the back seat too.
My first clear memory is of a being a toddler and being put into a VW well. No wonder I bonded with VWs so deeply:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/auto-biography/auto-biography-genesis/
I came home from the hospital in a Citroen 2CV in Epernay, France, but one of my first clear memories is of riding in the back seat of my uncle’s red 1965 Impala in Bethlehem, PA (oh, and he had a VW Beetle too, but it was more of a “normal” car in my very young eyes, so it didn’t set its mark in me as deeply as the big, beautiful Chevy did). No wonder my brand loyalties have always been a complete f—up between two continents 🙂
My folks had a ’70 VW camper with the westfalia interior (but no pop top) and crank out windows for camping and trips, my thing was to sleep in the very back right over the engine behind the futon. That was a nice little compartment, la673. I even think I was bought home in a ’61 Beetle.
All these solid memories and good feelings squandered by VW from around 1980 and onward are such a shame.
This article is exactly why I love this site. Sure, it’s about cars, but getting the background and context around them is priceless. Also, I’m fascinated about this period in history, and asking my parents about it gets me next to no information. (“Why would you want to know about that? I don’t remember, ask your mother/father.”) So thank you RLP for this fantastic article, and Mr Niedermyer for my favorite website.
I once rode in the suitcase well of a our (eventually to become mine) ’66 beetle at age 12, by this time it was quite a tight fit to fold up in that little compartment. Dad and Grandma (his Mom) up front, my Mom and a cousin in the back seat. The 5 of us rode from Santa Barbara to Glendale area, where Grandma and my cousin were to live with us.
I followed the space program closely, from the first Mercury flights and then Gemini through grade school, and was allowed to bring in a huge old console TV to woodshop during junior high summer school in 1969 to watch the Apollo 11 moon landing videos live.
And later the saga of Apollo 13 and the lifeboat return with the amazing Grumman lander functioning perfectly.
I worked for a VW dealership near JPL in the mid ’70’s, and often had engineers visiting the parts counter, they were interesting people, would ask me questions about the part they were buying concerning it’s construction and design, and often had suggestions on how the part was poorly (or well) made and how they thought it should have been engineered.
In 1986 I worked for a dealership in Santa Maria, and often got customers who worked for Vandenberg AFB, and they were excited that the Shuttle would soon be launching from this base as well as Florida. This all changed on 1/28/86 when Challenger exploded. It was my 30th birthday. A person who worked there said they already knew the cause of the accident but couldn’t talk about it, I mentioned the solid booster O rings the media was already talking about and he just gave me a little head nod. He said because of safety concerns the plans would be cancelled and Vandenberg launches would never happen now. I saw Challenger’s last landing in person at Edwards AFB a few weeks before.
Great write up. the story behind the cars is as interesting as the cars themselves.
It’s amazing how many families owned a VW, and how many people have fond memories of them. My mother drove a ’64, white with red vinyl, as I recall, before she got the ’68 Squareback (Type III variant), and I had a rusty, horrible ’69 Beetle, powder blue with black interior, in the early 80s when I was in high school. Mine topped out at an indicated 72 MPH, and I knew we were approaching top speed because the outside mirror would fold back against the door glass with a “thump” whenever I exceeded about 70 MPH.
My mother had a beetle with air conditioning. Maybe a 1300. The condenser was underneath in front behind the front skirt (there’s room there?) and probably had one or two electric fans. It was maybe three feet wide and a six inches tall and mounted at a shallow angle. It actually worked OK, and the car could actually accelerate more or less normal VW style somehow.
I had air conditioning installed in my 69 VW Beetle. It was a unit made by Heatransfer in San Antonio, Texas. From the patent information, this is basically how it worked:
“In accordance with the present invention, a reversible evaporator-condenser unit, including necessary coils, valving, and blowers, is mounted compactly in a casing which fits in and rests on the slightly modified flooring in the compartment provided in the Volkswagen body just behind the rear seat. The control console is mounted on the flooring tunnel in convenient position for access by the driver and is connected to the evaporator-condenser motors and the source of electrical energy by means of suitable cabling which runs along the central tunnel in the flooring. The compressor is conveniently mounted on the rear engine, and a hose cluster connects the same to the evaporator-condenser unit. The hoses are provided with quick connect fittings of the type provided with check valves so that the evaporator-condenser unit can be safely precharged in the factory or at any time prior to installation.”
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3595029.html
It worked well and kept the car icy cold; however, IIRC the power loss was significant.
Heattransfer was later involved in an interesting anti-monopoly lawsuit against VW that you can read about here:
http://openjurist.org/553/f2d/964
Those old VW (and other German cars) cross sections with luggage (or sometimes without) are so cool.
“Double-insulated warm air heating system”
None of that air was warm by the time it reached the vents up front in cold weather. I pulled a sleeping bag over my legs when driving the bus in the mountains during winter.
I spent so much of my youth in Type I VW’s; one of my closest friends had a ’61 Beetle from the day he got his driver’s license until it finally died, late in our senior year of college. We took Rick’s VW everywhere; it was true that you could drive them flat out for hours at a time without any problems. Unless, of course, being limited to a top speed of around 68 MPH was a problem. Rick usually kept his VW in third gear until 45-50 MPH, I don’t know if it was to keep the airflow moving through the heater or if it was to keep the mighty boxer up near the torque peak. In any case it made for loud travel. We perfected tag team driving in the VW; if the driver was steering with one hand and holding a drink with the other, it was the front seat passenger’s responsibility to move the shift lever to the gear called for by the driver, as he disengaged the clutch.
I had a similar experience in my 74 vw van. Coming back from the mountains outside Calgary, Alberta. My throttle cable broke and as I didn’t have a spare I opened up the hatch above the engine had my buddy with a screwdriver work the throttle linkage on the carb. I yelled back to him to give me some gas and then I dropped the clutch and we went through the gears this way for about 50 miles. It was really exciting once we got the city but we made it home in one piece…
These ramblings were most enjoyable. Thank you.
The article, and the responses to it makes me wonder what life would have been like had my father accepted Volkswagen of America’s offer to open up that dealership in Indiana, PA back in ’67.
I know I was very enthusiastic towards the idea, and probably would have worked for him at the dealership. Which would have made my life completely different from the way it turned out. A Type 1 was one of those cars I’ve always wanted to own and never came close to buying.
My parents were early adopters with a 58 or 59 Karmann-Ghia, but I guess they got the VW out of their systems after that, because neither of them ever went back for another.
We had neighbors who had a string of them, and a good friend owned a 67 in the late 70s, so I did get some VW time in that.
I feel so terrible for bursting your “Honduras Maroon” bubble – but I will agree that it is a great color name. And, as I recall the last conversation, Chevy used that name for the color, so I guess it would still be kind of correct to use the term for the best selling version of the color. 🙂
You are so right about 1968 as being “tumultuous”, i was 4, and could feel it very clearly.
I enjoyed every line – no, every word of this article. Great job!
The critique of Apollo 13 was appreciated as well. I think Howard was looking for dramatic effect as the blame was being tossed around.
Those F-14 drop tests were a first to my eyes. Wow.
> It was as if everyone was going crazy.
Perhaps that’s why the music of that time, no matter how good or romantic, still evokes troublesome feelings and memories.
The Four Seasons tune included in the post is from 1967 – still commonplace romantic pop. A year and a half later the 4 Seasons went into full socially-conscious mode, with titles like “American Crucifixion & Resurrection”, “Wall Street Village Day”, and “Saturday’s Father” (about an absentee dad). Quite a change from their earlier hits.
I still fondly recall the Beetle “sleeping compartment” and thought more cars had them then actually did. I thought those extra windows on 75-76 big GM hardtop sedans, along with the oval windows on Lincoln Continentals, must be so the kid in the sleeping compartment can set out.
*see* out.
That “T bird” pic half way down the article and the “4 Seasons” album cover really takes me back!!
A blue 4 dr “T bird” , 69 model year, roamed the streets of Arlington VA well into the late 80’s..possibly “90-91”.. Last memory of seeing it was near Pershing Dr& George Mason Dr.
Love the anecdote about your son sleeping in the rear parcel area. It made me recall my own memories of beating my brothers to ride in the “very back.” It was indeed cozy and warm for napping on long rides. Later, as a 70s mechanic, I dealt with infamous knuckle scraping heater hose replacements you described on that T-Bird. Thanks for posting.
My Dad had a ’59 as his 1st “2nd” car. He’d driven them in the US Army stationed in Germany in the early 50’s…also REO trucks. The ’59 was already a rust bucket, he used it to commute to Essex Junction working for the same company who made the computer system you did COBOL programming on. He was a chemist, got into semiconductors right after graduating in 1956; his 3rd job after graduating was working for Hoffman electronics in El Monte, CA, where he worked on solar cells, some of which went up on Explorer 6 satellite in 1959. He never worked on solar cells again, but worked on semiconductors his whole working career until he retired in 1990.
The ’59 met its demise parked in front of our house, when a teenager living at the end of our street hit it and it was totalled.
I never worked on Cobol, and my first mainframe experience was with Fortran 4 on a Xerox Sigma 6 mainframe. Eventually I worked for the same company as my Father (but not as a chip person), and was let go after a RIF, when I went to a job fair I overheard one of the employers mentioning Fortran, and commenting “wow, it’s been a long time since I worked on that”. He apparently took note of my nametag, and I later got invited to an interview to support an older product that still ran on Fortran. I told them I hadn’t worked with Fortran in 30 years, but they were still interested, though I didn’t get that particular job…I’m thinking Cobol might be similar, there’s still a lot of code in older languages that has yet to be ported to other languages, so likely need for people to at least maintain these “archival” systems.
My Uncle worked for the same company, though he still lives right down the road from the plant in Poughkeepsie, he worked in East Fishkill for most of his career. Ironically he also was in a RIF, got hired by another company, and ultimately worked onsite in Poughkeepsie, about the shortest commute he ever was to have.
I’ve only owned VWs since 1981, though never an aircooled one such as the Beetle. My Dad never bought another VW after that ’59 (his next car was a new ’68 Renault R10).