I stopped this weekend to ask this dapper gent if I could take a picture of him pouring gas into his trunk. He agreed, and even provided a winning smile. For our younger readers, all Beetles had their fuel tank in the trunk, directly in front of the driver’s feet, and you had to open the hood to access the fuel filler.
I grew up around two cars with the fuel filler under the hood (or is it trunk?). Grandma Godfrey’s Renault Dauphine placed it in the (rear) engine compartment, and my father’s 1967 Beetle was built the year before Volkswagen went with an external fuel door. ’68 and newer Beetles placed a fuel door on the body above the right fender and just in front of the passenger door.
Overall, Renault seemed to have the better concept, since placing the fuel tank in the luggage compartment led to fuel spills on your luggage, the groceries, or that pet fish you just bought.
Oh, the Beetle? It’s a 1960 model that the owner took delivery of in late 1959, and he’s had it ever since. He says the only original parts are the chassis and the spare.
If that spare dates back to 1959 I hope he doesn’t have to use it; the rubber has likely begun to rot even if the tire has spent its entire life in the VW trunk. VW’s not only had the gas tank in the trunk, up until the early/mid sixties they did not have a gas gauge; instead they had a one gallon auxiliary tank that you could use if you ran the main tank dry. A friend of mine had a ’61 VW that he purchased late summer of 1967 and that he drove until it finally died early in 1973. I can still picture him taking his notebook out of the glovebox to record the odometer reading; that was his method of knowing when to buy gas.
There’s a possibility that spare isn’t really serviceable to use as a tire. It could be that whatever size tire/rim he’s currently using won’t fit in the trunk, as well as fit on OEM rims.
The windshield washer system in those old VWs used to operate off the air in the spare tire, and that may be its only purpose these days. With compressed air requiring cash at nearly any gas station, it would be a rather pricey proposition to have to keep recharging the windshield washer via the air in the spare tire.
The lack of a fuel gauge reminds me of the fuel gauge on the old East German Trabant – a wooden stick.
The fuel gauge was standard for the 1962 MY.
It wasn’t technically an auxiliary tank, it’s a tap with two drains, one higher than the other and when you flip the handle, it opens up the lower one. Its about 1.5 gallons.
My ’59 is that way and I actually really like it. I just drive it until it sputters and then worry about getting gas. I keep a 5 spot in the car just in case it happens and I don’t have any cash on me.
And just me being picky about things, if that is indeed a 1960, the fuel tank is not original. 1960 still had the humpback tank with the larger filler on the right side. 1961 was the first year for the flatter tank with the smaller filler neck on the left side.
Pre-’63 would have had the Wolfsburg Crest on the hood, which this one is missing…
The owner told me he’d “replaced the body” along the way, but I’m not sure what that phrase entails….
Except for the Standard which continued on without the fuel gauge a while longer. My ’62 Canadian Standard didn’t have one.
“With compressed air requiring cash at nearly any gas station…” wow, I have never seen use of the compressors being anything but free in Europe. On the other hand I wouldn’t mind paying for it if petrol could be as cheap as in US…
That’s an interesting observation on gas station air compressors in Europe. Are most gas stations also convenience stores? That’s the almost universally accepted practice today in the US. Maybe there are still service stations where all they sell is gas and vehicle maintenance, but only in places where attendants are still required to pump the gas (like New Jersey).
The way it works in the US is gasoline is sold at razor-thin (or no) profit margins to keep the price as low as possible. US gas stations make their money on the ancillary purchases (inside the convenience store and air). Even if the air was not free at the compressor, it used to be you could go into the store and ask the cashier to turn it on (the theory being that if you went into the store, you would buy something). But even that’s a thing of the past.
I’m guessing that’s not how it works in Europe, that the stations sell gasoline at a nominal profit to be able to stay in business, and that’s why the air is still free.
over here (central and south east Europe) the stations are usually owned and run by the regional oil companies, for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMV.
All but the smallest ones have convenience stores but I suspect those stores do not do lot of business considering the prices are usually above regular stores which are plentiful in very densely populated cities of Europe. On the other hand petrol is very expensive so it’s stands to reason they earn big profit from petrol alone.
Use of air compressors is simply free. I tend to use them for both my bicycle and the car.
Remember when? How about yesterday!
One funny thing about fuelling old VW’s is that I constantly get told “wow that must get phenomenal mileage”
My usual answer is “not as good as you’d think”. Most people can’t appreciate what EFI and modern engine management has done for fuel efficiency.
So that means your project VW is drivable now? I remember you posting a shot here from when you were putting the interior together.
Uh, not quite. What I did yesterday was take the tank off the shelf and put it into the car.
Sent you a PE about that this morning, as it happens…
I picked up my “hot rod 40hp” engine last week from the rebuilder… Can’t wait to hear it run!
I once worked with a guy who had owned one of these. Someone backed into the front of his car, and jammed the hood lid shut. Absolutely mandatory to get it fixed before it ran out of gas.
Don’t forget that the windshield washer was powered by the air in the spare tire. That is almost Henry Fordian in its combination of utility and simplicity.
I will never forget one cold morning in the winter of 2010-11, my car was covered with a thick sheet of ice. Did those 6 volts fail to turn the engine over? Not at all. However I was on the reserve and when I got to the gas station I found that my hood was frozen shut. I had to chip away at the ice just so I could put gas in it.
I believe the fuel fill was moved behind a flap just aft of the outside right fender in 1968… This plays a prominent role in “Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo.” It was never explained how a 1963 Beetle came to have the ’68 fuel fill, though.
Vintage Beetles have a unique aroma, part horsehair (seat padding) and part gas fumes… It’s quite pleasant, actually, as long as the gas fumes don’t get *too* strong…
Getting gas in my ’64 was always a social event… It was rare when someone *didn’t* come over to talk about the car.
I recall exhaust fumes as well via the rusted junction boxes/”heater-defroster” system in my 1960 and 1963. Rule was to never close all of the windows. My 1969 seemed so modern by comparison.
Actually, remember when gasoline had a slightly sweet, and to me at least, much more pleasant aroma? It seems that in the past 2 – 3 decades, with elimination of much of the volatile elements, the addition of alternative octane boosters and now one part in ten of ethanol, that it now has a more sour, pungent smell, as well as leaving an oily residue, to say nothing of the possible deleterious effects on our beloved older machines.
The spare should be in front of the tank not mounted on top of it.
When I was racking up the miles in my ‘66 bug I found out there was a larger gas tank available, 16 gallons instead of the stock 10. I bought one and put it in but then the spare didn’t fit. So with the precision instrument beloved by all mechanics, the rubber mallet, I dented the front of the tank until the spare would go where it belongs. When I filled it up the first time it took 11 gallons.
The only thing keeping gas fumes from the passenger compartment in a bug is a pressed cardboard wiring cover held on by four thumbnuts. There has got to be a better way to isolate the two compartments.
If I ever get another bug, that’ll be the first thing I fix.
We had 1961 and 1967 red bugs that had that feature. And regarding that other old-time measuring device, the wooden stick, we used one on Pop’s 1950 Packard after the gas gauge died. And that reminds me of yet another old-time Packard device, the whistle in the gas filler pipe. It would sound as gas was poured into the fill pipe; when the whistle stopped you knew that the tank was full.
The wooden stick still worked on my 59 Fury sedan. My gauge would read “full” when the weather got damp, so the stick was used before leaving the house to decide if a gas stop was warranted.
A wooden stick came with my 60 Beetle when I bought it used in 66. And I had one of those little spiral bound notebooks as well. I guess we were pretty low tech in those days but somehow managed to survive. I don’t use half of the features in my G37 today but I sure love the ones I do, especially the smart key. No desire to go back to keys or wooden sticks.
I could never fully wrap my arms around a VW. While I found out they were fun to drive around town, living with one everyday sent chills up my spine, as the lack of a real heater in winter would have my teeth literally rattling! Plus the fear of having an accident in one!
a USAF buddy had an older model, a green 1969, I believe. He must have thought he bought a Porsche, because he certainly drove it like one – scared the daylights out of me more than once!
A guy in the barracks also owned a VW – bright red and the whole thing was pinstriped, like an old 1870’s locomotive! Every panel bordered with thin, white pinstriping. It actually looked good at the time. Should have taken a picture. He waxed his car more than I did mine!
I drove a friend’s 1973 Super Beetle for 3 months while he was overseas for that amount of time, especially after I sold my avatar in July, 1973. I’ve told that story more than once. Even though his car had the automatic stick shift, driving that car that summer in the heat was no picnic, but my avatar didn’t have A/C, either. I did like the fuel economy, as my car got around 20 mpg on the freeway, 16 around town, to and from base.
A guy in one of my college art classes after I left the USAF had an old bug – he paved it! Goofiest thing I ever saw. Tar & gravel. I’m sure it was the slowest thing on the road, too. I think it was his personal art project! It was faded red somewhere underneath.
It appears a certain demographic back then favored and drove Beetles – guys with patches on their jacket’s elbows – that sort of crowd, like I am now part of, plus a fedora – just as guys like me love their Impalas. Something for everyone!
Just a few random thoughts on the Beetle.
I remember my mom’s ’58, with the no gas gauge and the lever on the lower “firewall”. It always seemed to run out (needing to be switched to the reserve) when driving up over a rail crossing, or climbing up to get on the freeway.
IIRC, the earlier Beetles had a Schrader valve on the plastic windshield washer tank, and you inflated it to a given psi for pressure. The later Beetles had the hose from the spare, which for me never worked very well from new. I converted the reservoir in my ’71 Super Beetle to use just a Schrader valve like my ’65, which kept pressure much longer w/o deflating the spare tire.
My ’75 Super Beetle with Bosch L Jetronic delivered quite respectable fuel economy for its time. I got 30-33 mpg usually, and up to 36mpg on a long highway trip. Of course, this was during the 55 mph speed limit.
I found the DIN fuel economy ratings VW used to be pretty accurate. I think fuel economy was measured at a steady 60 mph (or 62 mph = 100 kph). My ’71 Super Beetle was advertised as returning 26 mpg, which is exactly what mine did on the highway, a little less in town.
That’s interesting that you got such good mileage with yours. I had a ’73 Super Beetle that I purchased new; it would struggle to get around 21-22 mpg in town and got about 25-26 on the highway. One of the reasons I got rid of it after a year or so was the poor (to my mind) fuel mileage. I decided that if I wasn’t going to get 30 mpg I might as well drive a car that was at least enjoyable to drive. Emissions standards had sucked all of the fun out of the VW air-cooled engines by this time. Of course I was used to driving road barges with big, torquey V8’s so I did tend to treat the VW’s gas pedal as an on/off switch.
I sympathize with you on the ’73 Super Beetle. My girlfriend at that time got a new ’73 Super Beetle (a Sports Bug), and it didn’t run nearly as well as my ’71; the emissions tuning zapped some of the life out of the engine. VW made running changes to the ’73 Beetles (alternator, paper element air filter), and some of the emission hardware was removed on the engine which might have been compensated for by leaning out the carburetor further. But when they went to fuel injection on the ’75, the Beetle came back. This was short-lived though, because by the time a friend bought a new ’77, all that was gained through fuel injection was lost. Great driveability, just no power at all. None. All these cars I’m referencing were California spec cars, with catalytic converters on the ’75 and ’77.
Obviously, for a time, Beetles were a big part of my passion for cars.
Mrs. JPC grew up driving VWs and also treated the gas pedal like an on/off switch. Unfortunately, she still does . . . . (shhhhhh!) Seriously, this is why on any given car, I seem to be able to get better mileage out of it than she does. Then, my hyper-miling eldest son can wipe the floor with either of us on gas mileage. He once got a 26 mpg tank out of his 89 Grand Marquis. Hard core!