Continuing this series, in 1956 the photographer bought himself a new Volkswagen to replace his ’53 Ford wagon. He wasn’t the only one, as VW sales suddenly took off rather explosively in 1955, and were the hot new thing. And for someone who loved to explore the outdoors and off-road, the VW’s superb traction, high ground clearance, and rugged air-cooled engine made it a natural. It’s why I loved my Beetles: I could take them just about anywhere in Colorado, and often surprised genuine Jeeps on the most rugged of that state’s many old mining trails and such.
This first shot isn’t off-road, but it’s just superb.
It appears the owner replaced the ’56 with a ’58 or newer, with the bigger windshield and rear window. I remember my VW doing the same thing with frozen slush on its front wheel.
In the ’50s, VW owners were a very clannish bunch, inevitably waving to each other on the road, and such. It appears one of their friends also bought one at the same time. And yes, these “keys” were a bit of a thing at the time.
An uncle of mine, a long time redrock country rural local, still uses one of these Beetles to get down dirt roads in the area. My mom had an orange one in the 70s that she traversed the Rockies in during some bad winter weather when the interstate was shut down behind her. Crawling along through the passes as she recalled, white-knuckled but still able to get enough traction to get by.
Yet some more outstanding photo’s. Air cooled VW’s surprising 4wd’s probably started the day the first Kubelwagen fired up.
I was never an VW owner, but it’s impressive to see these, and the car in the photos provides useful scale.
Wind-up “Keys”: I didn’t realize those were a thing quite so early; I’d have guessed early 1960s….
Very cool!
What fun it must have been to drive a bug up in those mountains!
That first picture belongs in a museum. I would pay for a print of it.
That first picture belongs in a museum. I would pay for a print of it. That is the Zion entrance picture
Agreed. All of them are wonderful, but that first one really stands out.
VW and the NPS could probably partner together and make it happen. Vintage park prints seem to be a big thing right now.
What I’d pay for is a chance to see Zion with so few people. It’s become an absolute madhouse in the past 10 years, more a Disneyland than a natural experience, and treated as such by too many of the visitors.
I drove through Zion after a fresh snowfall almost 40 years ago in my brand new 1982 Civic. No visitors, beautiful scenery, and I suspect with more modern radial tires the Civic was as good as a bias-ply-shod Beetle in the snow, though perhaps less traction for uphill starts. I suppose with the ubiquity of 4WD/AWD vehicles now, and of course more people, I’ll never experience that again.
We drove through it when heading to CA a couple of years ago for Xmas when the government was once again shut down. There were no services but you could wander around, it was pretty much deserted, didn’t realize how overrun it apparently is normally!
On the subject of Beetles in hot weather, when did they introduce the flip out rear windows? I’ve always been wary of older cars without some sort of opening to let the hot air out. Flow through ventilation helped since I don;t recall too much summer discomfort in my VW Sciroccos. This was brought mind by seeing a VW Squareback at the supermarket Sunday evening because it had fixed side windows and the one I used to carpool in had flip out windows.
I think the flip out windows were introduced for the ’65 models with the larger windows.
’63, even with the smaller windows.
Wonderful pics! I noticed, however in pictures #1 and #7, the parking lights are on top of the front fenders, and the rear window is larger in picture #7 as well, so those can’t be the same VWs as in the rest of the pics…they’d be later models…?
Good noticing. It appears he got a new on sometime after 1958, when the windows were enlarged.
And just to mess with people looking at it sixty-odd years later, he got the new one in the same colour.
As a college student, used Beetles were dirt cheap and everywhere. I attended university in Colorado, so I spent years cruising jeep trails, dirt roads, and deadly roads in Beetles. While they got us where we wanted to go, we’d all would have rather arrived in almost any other kind of vehicle. Gutless, cold, cramped, loud, and primitive, we used them because we had to, not because we chose to. One of my roommates had a Sirocco, one had a CJ-5 and another had a Buick Skylark and we used to fight over who got to ride in those instead of the Beetles.
In winter, when we went skiing, every Beetle had two in them – one to drive, and the other to scrap the frost off the inside of the windshield with an ice scraper. We used to freeze in Beetles during the winter. While Beetles could plow through deep snow and get miles into National Forests, they were quite limited as traveling cars.
I never had any trouble staying warm in my Beetles. As long as the system was intact, with no major rust holes or blockages, and one cracked the vent a tiny bit, it was good and warm. Cracking the vent was critical, because the Beetle was almost perfcetly airtight. So if the vent wasn’t cracked, the hot air wouldn’t come in.
I suspect that’s why so many complained about the heat in Beetles; they didn’t crack the vent.
We always opened the vent windows.
My dad had installed a tiny fan in the upper corner of the windshield by the visor, blowing air at the windshield in front of him, in order to have a spot to see out of. I grew up with two Beetles, a 59 convertible and a 64. In Chicago, we always had problems staying warm in them. By the time I was in college, my roommates had a 68, a 70, and a 72 Super Beetle. The Super Beetle had an auxiliary fan installed in the updated dash, to keep it clear.
Perhaps it was because I experienced Arctic Chicago winters and high altitude Rocky Mountain winter driving, but freezing in a Beetle was unforgettable.
I know it snows in Oregon, skied Mt. Hood, but perhaps the Beetles couldn’t handle the challenge of wet skiers, and sub-freezing temperatures? As to rust – by the time I rode in these Beetles, they were beaters, so that could have been an issue.
If those beetles had been driven around the Chicago area for any length of time, in the winter, they would have lost their heater channels, and probably their heat exchangers as well, so NO HEAT AT ALL
Ben_ VW tech
That makes sense. Two of the three Beetles had gotten to the point where both running boards had rusted off and there was rust in other areas as well.
I didn’t live in Oregon at the time; Iowa and Maryland. But as the other commenter pointed out, if the heater channels were rusted out, no heat.
My two Beetles had almost zero rust, so the system worked as intended.
Admittedly, they were a bit slower to generate heat. And I can well remember driving to my job as a bus driver in Iowa City at 5:45 in the morning in January with a scraper in one hand to clear my breath form the inside of the windshield. But it was a very short drive, and the poor car never had a chance to warm up.
Recall that the air cooled Beetle was somewhat slow to deliver heat, but after 15 minutes or so it was OK. The defroster was worse, with the middle of the windshield very slow to clear.
Ironically the fastest, hottest heater I ever encountered was another air cooled car, a friend’s1960 Corvair. The gasoline fired heater instantly furnished tons of heat. Interestingly another friend’s 1964 Monza didn’t have the gasoline heater and always was cold in the winter.
Going a bit off-track here, but did those gas-fired heaters smell?
No. They had heat exchangers. Just like a miniature furnace.
Be assured the engine-heated ones did anyway. The smallest oil leak – and those were fitted from the factory and varied only by time and intensity – and the smell of a hot unwashed mechanic joined the inevitable VW horsehair fug if you insisted on heat.
No wonder a dashboard vase was a thing, even though a dozen red roses jammed into every orifice of the interior wouldn’t have defeated that particular pong.
Be assured the engine-heated ones did anyway.
He specifically asked about the gas-fired auxiliary heaters. And no, they don’t smell.
As to the VW’s heating, after they changed to “fresh air” heating in 1963 (using heat exchangers) they were incapable of smelling unless the heat exchanger had rusted out. There was no way for oil or oil smells to get in there.
Yes, Dr Porsche, the design was typically ingenious and lightweight and cheap, but it was tin (and paper, on the ducts!). Tin bends easily, warps, rusts, and unless perfect – perhaps only ex-factory – has fit issues. The rocker covers are notorious leakers, down onto the heat exchange box below, and the tin-to-exhaust seal at the front needs only a wee gap – not too hard with differing expansion rates over time – for the pong of hot oil to enter. And any little oil blow-by fume or whiff from oil-bath aircleaner or leak from the top half of the engine bay (above the rubber seal) is taken in by the fan supplying the air in the first place.
I’ll grant that I only ever went or drove in VW’s that weren’t new, but they all ponged of unbathed mechanic in winter.
Auxiliary gasoline heaters were a dealer-installed option for all air-cooled VWs through the 1970s. I vaguely recall them as factory installed on US Type 4s because of their large interior volume. They were a popular option on Things because of their vinyl side curtains.
Wow, great shots. I am hoping to get myself back to Zion NP someday, but it won’t be in my Beetle.
One of my 2021 goals is to go Beetle camping, even if it’s nearby on Lake Erie or something. Gotta use that car or lose it.
Back in the days when the world population barely touched 3 billion people, these places were largely untouched, thus pollution was generally smaller and forest conservation was not even considered. Plus, these places were already well known for their stunning and beautiful photography.
Certainly, I would’ve chosen something a bit larger, perhaps a Buick Electra, with plenty of room for my young lady and some nice hundreds of horses to make some fun in the dirt. Not the perfect car, but something to go with style and comfort.
Nah, 290 horses in a nice 67 LeSabre 340-4 would be fine. You’d have a little money left over for some grub too.
Pollution was far worse in the 20th century than folks today could ever imagine.
I need to get back out there, soon.
In 1960, my dad carpooled with a coworker who drove them 25 miles through bumper-high snow drifts in his bug. Dad was so impressed that he traded in his black on red 1959 Buick Electra convertible (!) for a 1961 Gulf Blue beetle. I can’t imagine transitioning from a 4000 lb car with 300 horses under the hood to battling crosswinds in that little VW with its 40 HP four-speed, but he never looked back. We became that family who always drove weird little foreign cars when everybody else had classic American gas-guzzlers in their driveways. People stopped laughing when the gas crisis came around.
Just look at all the wonderful pictures of VW’s venturing into secluded spots, and leaving with little evidence of their having been there; compared to the monster mudder tired wonders of today, leaving ruts and shredding/throwing dirt and vegetation behind them!
Several years ago, I saw a new version parked among some trees and noted that, unlike any other vehicle I could think of, it actually seemed to belong there. This design compliments natural surroundings, it does not detract from them.
“Did you ever wonder how the guy who drives the snowplow….GETS to the snowplow?” Anyone else remember that very clever Beetle ad?
His pictures get better every year, these are the best ones yet, most excellent!
He has the uncanny ability to take a nature picture that should be just nature in all its glory, and then park a car in it and just make it so much better. The car often gives us a perspective of just what we are looking at, and sometimes it’s just plain cool. Like many artists, their work isn’t appreciated until after they are gone.
The heater in a Vw had two settings, cold and icecold…..
Photograph No 5. I recognise the location. North rim Grand Canyon camp site. Can’t remember the name. 80Km off the main highway. Last 20km brutal even for even my friend’s F150. And a VW got there? Just wow.
The VW bus indicator/park lights are interesting those werent a fitment out this way on beetles they went from semafores to fender top indicators in one fell swoop.
What glorious photos.
It’s terribly tempting to say that this proves what gorging greed the modern off-roader represents compared to what can clearly be done with a lot less, but it it would be naive.
The sweet little white-walled off-roader here is also a death trap (and no, Mr N, for once I’m not talking about its rear undergirdings). It has no seat belts, no headrests, no airbags, no crumple zones and so much more (of less), and its little clatterbanger four pours out untold evils for all to breathe.
The gorgeous pictures and the Beetle are now artifacts both.
The most that could be said is that there is, say, a Fiat Panda 4wd with all those mod cons and room for four and 0.9 litres of bodice-ripping turbo 2 cylinder power and off-road capability to match a Range Rover (see youtube somewhere), and that it’d sure do me, but then someone will point out why they need (or want) a great deal more than that: and the truth is we live in the complex reality (and with the giant advances) of the times we live in and not in the past, where they really do do things differently.
Fantastic pictures. I did enjoy off roading my Beetle, the ’66 Fastback was decent off road as well, though the Beetle had the advantage of a well sealed engine compartment keeping out water when fording streams, the Fastback’s distributer could get wet if you got too carried away.
Heater and defroster seemed to be a little more powerful in the Fastback as well, maybe the crank mounted fan moved a little more hot air in this design.
These pics surely show why Paul Simon wrote that eponymous song. great shots