Text by Victor Van Tress.
Time to cover another couple of cars that have been part of my collection. Today, it’s Bug time, in Sports mode. But first, a little bit about the models.
We’re talking about the 1973 ½ Sports Bug. They didn’t make them in either 1973 or 1974, only in 1973 1/2. The Sport Bug was mainly an appearance package, available in bright Saturn Yellow or Marathon Silver Metallic. They also came with Recaro style seats, a Racemark style leather steering wheel, special strips and blacked-out trim, with Porsche 914 style wheels.
Beyond that it carried a dual port 1600cc with a 388 final drive and a strut-type front suspension. All that, of course, made it more expensive than a standard Bettle, however, they did sell. The line was heavily promoted by VW of America and was one of many special editions the Beetle would get through the ’70s. Of those, the Sports Bug is among the favorites.
Over the course of the years, I’ve had two. One yellow back in 1979, and my current metallic gray with blue that I bought a few years ago. I did a lot of Track Time and Autocross events with the first one, and it did very well. Common thought is that you need disk brakes on these, but the drum brakes worked very well. Wore it out and sold it.
After a long hiatus, enter car #2, bought in 2021 with 95,000 miles on it with no intention of racing it. One owner, all original paint, original license plates and still on the original California Pink Slip title issued in 1973. As was common with early two stage clear-coat paint jobs, the clear-coat shattered. But the fact that it never sat in the sun, the clear-coat microcracked evenly from top to bottom. We’ll call it patina’d. About 20,000 of these were built back in the day, and one can only wonder how many remain around.
One thing, I won’t forget about the day I bought #2. I guess that the girl’s husband wanted her to have a car with the safety features we enjoy nowadays. But boy, did she cry as I drove away.
Related CC reading:
Lovely – and I bet it drives rather nicely as well!
I doubt Ive seen an actual genuine sport bug, but with better rim tyre packages those things will corner well, ditching the swing axles made a big difference to them, drums all round work on light cars ok especially with twin leading shoes up front.
Wow what a cool car. My wife drove a ’74 Super Beetle for many years and also cried when she sold it.
I liked your description of the clear-coat “micro-cracking.” That does seem to account for a better looking patina. There are a few ’90s-era Toyota Tacomas around town that have a nice patina, all of them in (chalky) red.
Good story!
Nice ;
VWoA made and sold quite a few differing special models at this time, my favorite was the gold “Sun Bug”, I bought several as lost co$t junkers and easily brought them back to full life, the 3.88 ratio final drive was known as the “Freeway Flyer” transmission and bolted right in to any 1969 or never Bug making them fantastic commuters as long as you know how to tune them .
The VW swap meets for years after had plenty of sellers selling the original tape racing stripe and lettering graphics dirt cheap .
Nice to see one still being loved and cherished .
Back when I was married I bought my then wife a 1968 AutoStick #117 DeLuxe sun roof Beetle and rebuilt it, it was that never too common dark green non metallic color the insurance companies hated so much .
I built it for her daily driver, 1600C.C. single port with low compression ratio so she could lug it in top gear without damaging it, she complained, pissed and moaned about it for ten years, the day I gave up and sold it she cried rivers as it drove away with a deliriously happy new owner, as a Journeyman VW Mechanic I’d done pretty much every peak and tweak I knew plus all new custom interior….
The sun roof worked properly and never leaked a drop .
I remember this magazine advert, looks like a cartoonist from Mad Magazine .
VW’s did have good brakes for such small cars but in any sort of competition or hard driving down hill they’d overheat and fade .
Luckily VW made disc brakes standard equipment on Karmann Ghias so it was a simple and dirt cheap thing to buy a bent ‘Ghia beam from some wreck and bolt the disc bakes onto your post 1965 Beetle, didn’t even need to replace / change the master cylinder =8-) .
-Nate
I believe the Mad Magazine artist is Mort Drucker or Jack Rickard.
But fans of the magazine would have picked up on it immediately.
Of course, the ultimate VW spoof ad is this:
Remember them well.
Nice bug, hadn’t heard of that special edition before, VW didn’t seem to like associating itself with racing or performance much, at least up until the mid 70s, There was the Gelbschwarzer Renner (yellow and black racer that Germany got which was similar, the UK didn’t get any of these though, closest we got was probably the GT beetle which was a euro model 1300s (another that the UK didn’t get, being a torsion bar beetle with a 1600 twinport) with some special trim and badges, in one of three colours, red, yellow or green, not especially sporting but cool all the same.
As I recall that was Mad Magazine’s cartoonist
Here’s another
Of course this doesn’t include the seats, the steering wheel, the wheels or the black trim like headlight rings and side mirror or bumpers. But you could get this:
Maybe one of your Sports Bugs was on the roof of Sun-West VW pictured in PN’s vintage Sunset Blvd photo post.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/vintage-snapshots-and-photography/a-drive-down-the-whole-length-of-sunset-boulevard-in-1973-from-west-to-east-facing-north/
My future ex-wife dumped a troublesome ’72 Vega for a new Saturn Yellow Sports Bug.
Yeah, they dolled up the old Beetle to juice up sales, but it sure beat her miserable Vega.
I remember the “Champagne Edition” models from about this time.
We own a 1973 carburetor fuel system Beetle that we still drive most every weekend.
Still as much fun as ever!
I wrote up a Formula Vee Bug back when I lived in IL: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/curbside-special-edition-volkswagen-formula-vee-beetle/
I guess Sport was relative to stock. I think those seats were reused in the 78 Scirocco SCCA championship edition. There were quite a few late Beetle parts in early water cooled cars. My roommate had a 73 or 74 Beetle that I drove once, but his was a standard model with automatic stickshift