i loves me a good volkswagen bus. i spied this one tootling down interstate 5 with a sticker in the window proclaiming “0-60 in 11 minutes”. it was piloted by a young lad who looked not a day past 19 and every bit a character. i remember my friend steve lodefink had a volkswagen bus in college…. t’was in sweet condition and i believe it was a ‘76 in two-tone cream yellow and white. i also recall him telling a tale of how he fell asleep at the wheel and the bus flipped over on its side and skidded that way for 100 yards coming to a rest in jackpot nevada. luckily ‘old fink emerged with nary a scratch. magic bus.

i spied this 1968 volkswagen campmobile careening down the highway and noticed someone took pains to paint “penny lane” on the back of it as well as lower the front end….. Vroooom! “In Penny Lane there is a fireman with an hourglass. And in his pocket is a portrait of the Queen. He likes to keep his fire engine clean. It’s a clean machine”

beetles, transporters, karmann-ghias & type III air-cooled volkswagens were the coolest cars ever built. they had an irresistible combination of austerity, functionality, affordability, quality, and were ingeniously engineered & designed. these cars appealed to people with brains: professors, hippies, architects, college kids, beatniks, enlightened suburbanites, frugal housewives, design conscious proletariats, etc. an air-cooled volkswagen was not merely an automobile, it became a physical manifestation of ideology, culture, equality and hope for a better world. perhaps the only similar galvanizing product that exists today is the iphone & apple computer…. yet these fall well short in the charm department compared to a minty fresh 1963 vw beetle.