A slightly different QOTD than normal. Instead of responses to a direct questions and the option to explore and digress, I’m looking for facts.
I make no claim to any level of VW Beetle expertise, or even to be a particular fan. I admire VW for making so many so well, their durability and Dr Porsche’s engineering even if I’m not a fan of all of the solutions. But I’m not going to tell you much about a Beetle from viewing a series of photos. So, that’s where you come in. Not so much a QOTD as an EQOTD – Exam Question of the Day.
I’ve got the basics on this model, from the obvious clues and registration. It’s a 1963 car, with a 1192cc engine, and clearly beautifully maintained and cared for.
Beyond that, my immediate knowledge is limited to what I could research, or rather what I hope you’ll provide. How many Cabriolets were built? How many sold in the UK? How powerful? How much? How fast?
Were those bumpers options? Is there anything on this car that has been subsequently added perhaps? Was there a choice of hood colour? Is this a factory colour – I don’t usually go for grey cars but this colour works well here.
There are enough VW aficionados in the CC community to answer most of those questions, and others, and probably others. Just one simple rule – no more than one fact in each answer or otherwise I’ll have it all in the first five responses. Points awarded for obscure facts.
Or just admire and enjoy.
To start things off, and for avoidance of doubt, our kid, the engine’s at the back.
True fact: I’m not a huge Beetle fan either, but this one is infinitely nicer than the overly decorated 1963 Beetle with whitewalls, chrome and wood roof rack, tilt-out windshield and other gew-gaws which was attracting a large crowd at a neighborhood fair I wandered through last night. I almost took out my phone to record what NOT to do to a VW but I didn’t even bother.
I’ll take the admire and enjoy option! I love the color. Gray is usually rather drab, but this car is anything but. The picturesque flowery village setting and spotless cleanliness help, but this VW would look good anywhere.
I’ve never been to England (hope to fix that some day), but is it parked on the wrong side of the street?
Does 442 stand for 4 cylinder, 4 speed, dual exhaust?
The UK (and other European countries AFAIK) doesn’t require parking in the direction of travel. Particularly on residential streets, it’s common to see cars parked facing either way on either side of the street.
Not a specifically Beetle-related fact, but there you are.
Technically, in the UK after dark only, this would be an infringement. But in a line of cars, you’d be very very unlucky to get a ticket.
Nice Cabrio.
Only one fact per comment? 1192 cc.
40 hp (SAE gross); 34 hp (DIN net).
Top speed: 72 mph/115 kmh
The color appears to be the original “anthracite”.
The white color of the top is an original color.
The bumper with overriders was stock on the Cabrio as well as the DeLuxe Export sedan.
As to how many Cabrios were sold in the UK, not even the most die-hard air-cooled VW fan is going to know that readily. That would require some pretty serious digging. You could try Google, but it probably won’t answer this question readily. But if you keep digging a bit, you might be able to come up with something.
62 was the last year for the Wolfsburg crest on the trunk
According to Doyle Dane Bernbach, while a VW Beetle will definitely float, it will not float indefinitely.
William Arnold Ltd was apparently the distributor (dealer?) of these in Manchester at the time this was sold new and between 1953 and 1980. This car carries the sticker of that establishment in its rear window.
They appear to have an interesting history of coachbuilding and after that being dealers for some interesting manufacturers including Buick, Lancia, Bentley, Sunbeam, and more, all before WWII.
VWC is an Essex registration according to this
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pattle/nacc/arc0607.htm
That’s interesting. Seems like in the US, license plate letters/numbers are random, apart from each state having their own plates, of course. Also, some states list the owner’s county on the state, which I like.
I would have guessed it was a custom plate standing for VWCabriolet.
At various placetimes, licence plate numbers in the US have had location-related meaning. For example, Colorado plates were county-coded for quite awhile; see here.
Yes. Montana’s plates use the exact scheme, right up to this day. They only have 56 counties, which are organized from most population density (1) to least population (56), stuck by now in some year now in the FAR past.
Regarding Montana’s license plates, evidently the population-based sequencing holds true only for the half-dozen biggest counties from the 1930s (when the current sequencing was put in place). The other 50-odd counties were apparently just assigned random numbers.
I recall this article – written about 20 years ago – where a retired researcher from the Montana Legislature tried to track down just what those county-based numbers were based on. His conclusion was that they were random. It’s an interesting read for folks interested in the minutiae of something like license plate numbers and geography:
https://missoulian.com/whats-in-a-number/article_573be317-476d-55f8-ab75-e1dc9baa9514.html
Currently, six US states still have license plate sequencing (for standard-issue plates) tied to county geography. Those states are Alabama, Mississippi, Nebraska (for all except Omaha-region counties), Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
Another five states – Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Iowa – have county names on their general-issue plates but have generic number sequencing.
Mississippi has both county-based number sequencing, and county names on their plates.
I remember reading years ago in Ski magazine about some Colorado county code that had been discontinued, but grandfathered in, so that if you had those plates, it indicated that you had lived in that area before the resort boom of the 1980s. As such, they were prized among locals and there was some status and snobbery around who had the old county code tags. In at least one case, custody of the legacy county plates were the most hotly contested part of a divorce.
They don’t do custom plates over there as we do here but there is a market for existing plates that can be interpreted to say something, i.e. you can buy plates from each other or from companies that happen to have specific sequences that are meaningful to you. Prices can vary from a little to how badly do you really want it…
It has some of the first asymmetrical-lowbeam headlamps, with interesting truncated-spiral optics to produce the upkick to (in this case) the left. Here’s an image from the 1957 patent.
It appears to be hiding its tailpipe(s) somewhere; I don’t see them.
Curious, for such a stock-looking car. EV conversion?
More likely an extractor exhaust, but usually those are visible too. Hmm.
I *think* I’m seeing them right below the place where the bumper overrider bar meets the main bumper toward the center, second photo. If you look very closely, there appears to be a wee bit of soot staining from these on the face of the bumper, just visible in a couple of the photos.
I see no trace of ’em in photo № 2, but I think I might see them in № 5…or else that’s just a trick of light and shadow.
Having clicked on the images for full size, they are partially visible in at least two of the images. They seem to be a bit shorter than stock pipes.
Its lenses might or might not be as original; amber front turn signals weren’t very common in the U.K. in 1963, and amber rear ones weren’t required there til 1965.
The hood’s two groups of five wide air slots are horizontal—not like the canted groups of five slots on some later hoods (’71 shown here). The hood on the grey car is far nicer looking than the later item, if you ask me.
What’s with the “VWC”? Is that a personalized plate?
Scroll up a bit and see Buck Stradler’s comment and link.
It might be some way. WC denotes Essex and Manchester, home of William Arnold, is not in Essex.
Best guesses? Either it is a personal plate or the car was sold in Essex and then re-sold at a later through William Arnold in Manchester, which sale the owner is now marking or recording. In the UK, the plate stays with the car for life, unless it’s swapped for a personal one.
Fact:
While Porsche got all the design credit after the war, the basic mechanical designs were created by the famous Dr. Hans Ledwinka of Tatra fame. If you look at the pre-WW2 Tatra type 97, it’s rear air-cooled flat 4 boxer engine with 4-speed transaxle & swing axles, is basically the beginnings of the KDF wagen. I’ve been told the VW engine will even bolt up to the Tatra 97 and post-war Tatra T-600 Tatraplan, without modification!
Old Leddy didn’t invent the tube frame,nor torsion bars.Nor aircooled flat four. Nor rear engine. Nor transaxle. He simply put stuff together, as did Ferdinand. BTW Ledwinka considered himself to be an Austrian,not a Czech.
False.
I’ve had to debunk this so many times, I finally wrote a very detailed history of the various streams that influenced the VW:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-history-whos-the-real-father-of-the-volkswagen/
The Tatra connection is on Page 3, but I think you’ll like the whole thing.
The T97 arrived in 1936, by which time Porsche had been developing his rear engine concepts for four years! And no, a VW engine will not just bolt to a T-97 or Tatraplan.
It’s amazing that this “fact” keeps getting circulated…
Below is the air cooled boxer four in Porsche’s 1933 T32 project, which resulted in four very functional prototypes. Three years before the T97.
It looks right from here deluxe trim included those bumpers, 63 on had different front fenders from earlier models the trunk/boot was enlarged somewhere, amber indicators are right though flashing indicators were not a legal requirement here everything had them by then.
Paul, I read your article for the first time today, and I have to agree with you. I’ve been re-quoting info I’ve seen in other magazines over the years, even some Tatra websites.
I would like to send a link to your article to some Tatra groups, especially the Tatra registry UK [TRUK] if that’s OK with you.
Of course. I’d love to see some Tatra owners/lovers read this, as they are the ones who invariably came up with this and endlessly regurgitate it. And I understand; the T77/87/97 were splendid achievements. But just like the VW, none of these cars were conceived and developed in a vacuum. Aerodynamics, light weight, rear engines, 4 wheel independent suspension, air cooling; all of these were (and had been) of great interest to many since Rumpler’s Tropfenwagen, which I credit as the true primary inspiration to all that followed.
Tatra rightfully gets credit for putting these concepts in a newer form (after the Tropfenwagen) into production first, even if the others were still testing, experimenting, developing, or awaiting the proper funding (in Porsche’s case).
The real brilliance and genius of the VW was not that it looked like a small scale Tatra; it was in the very many new details in its design and most of all in its construction that allowed it to be built for the incredibly low price that Hitler decreed.
The T-97 was more than twice as expensive, and could never have become a true people’s car. It was in a whole different category, and was of course essentially a slightly shrunken T87 with a four cylinder engine.
But everyone likes the idea that one person “invented” the VW; what the great majority of folks don’t realize that it’s profoundly different to build a concept/prototype (or just drawings) then it is to engineer a car to be built by the millions for an unheard of price. That’s where the really hard work went at Porsche’s company in production-engineering the VW. And it turned out to have been brilliantly accomplished, as the VW was remarkably cheap to build, which is of course precisely why it came to dominate its market. No one until the ’60s could offer its combination of qualities, performance at its price. And that was the doing of Porsche and his engineers.
The details of that are quite fascinating. The VW was the first car in the world to have the kind of fluting or edges in its bodywork, on its front and rear hoods and along the sides of its roof structure. Why? It allowed them to use a thinner gauge of steel and yet have it be rigid enough. Brilliant. That’s just one example.
I am going to guess, and I could be wrong, that the taillights were monochromatic in 1962, which is the year I believe this car is as mentioned above re the Wolfsburg crest. I’m thinking these should have been red only, but I am not sure if that still applied in the European market.
I am also thrown off by the louvered vents in the engine cover. I had not thought those had come along until later in the sixties. However this being a convertible, maybe the vents were an option.
Every VW Cabrio since the first on Hitler rode in in 1938 has louvers there, as the louvers above the engine lid are gone in the cabrio. How else to get air into the blower?
The sedans started getting louvers in the engine lid in 1970.
Paul,
After the fall of the iron curtain, I was seriously looking for Tatra cars to find [I did end up bringing in 2 Tatras], and I often saw cheaper cars available because they had the incorrect engine. There was for several years a 1950 T-87 with a later T-603 V8 engine for sale in many of the UK car magazines, and at least a half-dozen T-600 cars with the VW 1200 motor. I was assured over & over again by supposed Tatra ‘experts’ in the Czech Republic, that the VW engine case was the exact same 4 bolt hole mounting as the T-600 gearbox case, but [if I remember correctly] the gearbox input shaft had to be modified to fit into the VW flywheel [and it used the T-600 clutch].
The generally held understanding among English speaking Tatra people is the VW engine will fit into all the post-war Tatra cars [up thru the T2-603] with only very minor changes, mostly to throttle controls, etc. I was at the ‘100th anniversary of Tatra’ meeting in Germany back in 1997, and I do remember at least one T-600 with an upright VW engine installed. Today I wish I had pressed the owner for more details, but as I spoke only basic conversational German, and coming from the former DDR, he spoke no English, I didn’t learn the engine swap details.
If I ever pull my T2-603 engine again, this time I intend to compare the specs with those of the VW engine.
As for the T-87 with the T-603 engine, I could have had the car for only about $6,000, but it needed a full restoration, and I thought it would be very difficult to find a complete T-87 motor, so regrettably I passed on the car.
Your comments are welcome!
Maybe so. I did some Googling and found some references to such a thing, being described as “fairly easy”.
I did find a picture of a T603 bellhousing; one obvious problem is that the VW has its starter mounted next to the transmission, with a hole in the bellhousing for it. The Tatra apparently has its starter mounted alongside the engine. That alone would pose some challenges, in my mind.
But folks were creative in the postwar era, and i’m not surprised they did it. Engine swaps of all kinds were very common.
FYI, there’s a temporary Tatra exhibition (cars and trucks) in the DAF Museum right now, celebrating their 125th anniversary and the current DAF-Tatra bond (Tatra Phoenix AWD trucks and tractors).
I haven’t been there yet, the opening was just yesterday, so I’ve no idea what to expect and how many items are on display.
If a 63 bug with those rear bumper guards is tapped lightly in the rear, or if you back up slowly into something, the bumper guards will bend slightly toward the engine lid and you won’t be able to open it to check the oil until you unbend the bumper guards/bumper.
The registration check shows it as a 1963 Grey Volkswagen Unknown.
The MOT log shows nothing before Sept. 2017, when the recorded mileage was 25 miles.
Was it restored/rebuilt in 2017 when it received the flasher units on the front wings?
Just a thought.
It appears that the centers of the road wheels are the grey color of the bodywork, while the outboard pieces of the welded units, containing the flanges, are painted black. I don’t recall seeing a combination like this before. Is it something that was done as an option upon manufacture, or was this done at some later date?
Presumably when this car got repainted, which it almost certainly did.
It’s a sweetie that’s for sure .
Early 1963’s still had the Wolfsburg crest on the bonnet .
I know only -one- fact based comment was requested but Paul blew that right out the window so here’s another :
1963 was the first year of VW’s *excellent* fresh air heating system .
It’s the _only_ year that used the fresh air heater boxes with the same, smaller diameter hoses as all Beetles previously making those heater boxes gold to the few that care about the detailed things .
I have a rust free pair stashed away just in case…
VW made so many tiny incremental changes it’s amazing .
-Nate
Count me as one who loves the original Beetle. Particularly the years 1955 to 1971. I didn’t care too much for the big round taillights of the 1973 and later versions.
I think the answers to your questions might depend a bit on the market, there wasn’t necessarily “one” version of the beetle everywhere…it was my understanding that here in the US, we got the “deluxe” version which had small differences from those in other markets…don’t know where I read this, I’m hardly a beetle person, but I’ve owned nothing but VWs since 1981, but all watercooled, but my Dad only owned aircooled one (a ’59) and before that drove early 50’s models when he was in the army in Germany, where they were issued to him (could that’s where he learned to drive…his parents didn’t own a car until after I was born…my Grandmother never learned to drive).
I don’t know about the numbers of convertibles either, except relative terms they were much less common than sedans, probably because they were built by Karmann. One odd thing I noticed was that it has 2 outside mirrors on either side, which I doubt was standard especially on the right side back then, but easy to add as an accessory but I didn’t see an inside mirror (or can’t distinguish it being there) which seems odd except in a convertible…with the top down, it is hard to see out the back (even with the top up with the small rear window) so maybe that’s why the emphasis on outside mirrors? Still, I think the inside mirror would have been on the car originally..
My Dad’s car was rusty but it was US spec, he didn’t have semaphores for example, but I think it did originally come with white walls and hub caps, but his was well used by the time he got it, don’t recall if his still had them. It did have similar bumpers, and was left hand drive (instead of right hand).
I’d guess there might be “spotter’s guides” (similar to manuals helping identify different birds) that could at least point out visual differences from the outside that might help get other details from outside the car.
Sorry my post doesn’t follow the “one observation per post” but didn’t think that format would be best for what I was aware of on this.
Model year 1962 – 10129 made, 1963 10599 made.
From Keith Sueme 1996 book ‘Essential VW Beetle Cabriolet’.
The cover car of my copy of Keith Sueme’s book is a Cabriolet of this year with a Belgian registration. It has clear front indicators, the wheel centres are body colour – I think this lasted until 1966 – and the VW on the hub caps is in body colour, as is the car in the post. 1962 was the last year for painting the logo on the hub caps.
The Belgian car doesn’t have towel rail bumpers, but they have always been a popular accesory.
I came to this late, following a rabbit hole from another post. The Beetle is a 1962 model – August 1961 to July 1962. Double section tail lights with amber indicator were made standard across Europe for that model year. The heat exchangers mentioned in a previous comment were introduced the following year.
My Dad bought a new Beetle this year, but it was not a popular car where he worked. He was driving Mum’s BMC Mini van one day, she was rushing home from work in the Beetle and driving at Mini speeds ended upside down in a field. The car was a write off, but Mum was alright.