The Cal-look Lounge

I got into them because my Dad always drove them.

We didnt have much money and they where a cheap car at the time.

My bug cost me £150 in 1987 and i couldnt buy much at the time for that sort of money. It wasnt till i started to read Safer Motoring ( the only vw mag in the uk at the time ) and street machine that I realised that what was going on with vw's.

How did you gst into vws. lets hear your stories

I think like a lot of people, I was looking into cheap transportation for college. At the time I was into hotrods and had a 47 Ford in the works but needed a daily as I had just recently sold my 1953 Chevy pickup. My criteria at the time was, not a Jap car, cheap, older than I am and more interesting than a Dodge omni. I ran across a 71 Bug which had been lowered, dechromed and painted a dark metalic green on a car dealer lot. Even though the car had all sorts of problems I fell in love with it. THen of course, being a hot rodder at heart, I wanted to make it go faster. This was back before the WWW and all we really have was the Vintage VW email list serve. This is where I first ran across the name Seume. I think it was about this time a certian book by the same guy was published. That lead to the original CLF, with its horrible backgrounds,  where people were discovering that 94s wouldn't grenade on start up and 1776s were not the biggest motor you could build. Been hooked ever since. There is noting like cruising in a well tuned hot VW.

I love VWs because they are simple, fun to work on and drive and they are cool looking. And of course the VW community is great. I love the idea of taking a car no one expects to be fast and blowing the doors off some unsuspecting muscle car. VW vs VW has never been a real interest to me. I want to go race cars of other makes.

--louis

i remember my grand father ran with audi 80 in the late 70's she was light green , and one day the car goes to the vw/audi garage for usual inspection , and the dealer gave to my grd father an metaliic green super beetle , and with this one ,we went to seek my mother at hiswork and I remember to play on the rear seat it was into 78/79/80 and later when i was 14 years old can be and I remember to have to buy the first VW scene, and by looking at this magazine I said to have also considering these cars and these buses but I was not able any more me to remember when I had seen them and for this day I have started to buy the VW magazines  and to want to have one of them

I got into vw's because of my dad.  When I was born my parents drove me home on a split window.  Between the ages of 1-4yrs my parents had to drive me around in the bug to fall asleep.   ;D

That is how I got into vw's..................... We always had a vw parked at home .......... :)

It was a cheap car to drive in high school in the mid 80's.

I always wanted a fast car, but had no idea you could do all this crap to VW's, so I felt like I had 'settled' on a Volkswagen.

Nice finding out I didn't.

Eh ? what else is there ????

I was raised in a vw shop - from the time i was 13 till now - at 47 - own a vw repair shop - just fell in love with them.

my dad always told stories about his type 3 notch and my grandfathers karmann ghia, so when I turned 18 is sold the shitty renault R5 I had and bought the G2 gti I still drive today and the first day I had enoug money I bought a type 3 notch that I left outdores for a year and then got the opportunity to trade it for the Karmann.
I think it all started with the hate for a Jap  :P I think in belgium now a days it's the other way around, the japs are becoming cheaper with the day and going faster and faster, I just love driving something old enough that your grandfather drove it and still can kik ass (someday ::))

it was my dads fault too, he brought me one for my first Car and I have never looked back since - in fact I never even got rid of it ;) :)

Shit I've owned that thing 12 years now!!! :o :)

I can blame my father too. Dad was a foreign car machanic, he would always bring home a car. Usually the customer would bring in a VW with a bad motor. Dad would tell them how much it would cost for a new motor. They would not have the money to repair it., so he would offer $100.00.
I got my first VW back in 1981 at the age of 13. A blue 63 Bug hit front and rear. There was a "damaged in shipment" store in town that had a cracked Baja Kit. For $30.00 my Dad bought it and told me to put it on. I worked on that Baja for 8 years. I learned alot and did get it running before I sold it to some kid.
Let the tradition continue.
Erich

I was brought home the day after I was born in a 1971 Westfalia. My dad built a 88x69 motor for it, and my mom sewed up the side curtains ;D

My cousin brought me into vw's after i saw him beat a mustang with his then 1679 iDA engine on the 1/4 mile.
After that i noticed they were a cheap car to work with ;D

I've been into all sorts of cars since I was a small child - apparently I used to sit in my high chair with my back to the living room window in a morning and tell my parents which of the neighbours was going to work just by the sound of their engines! My Dad restored his Frog-eyed Sprite when I was about 5 years old and I thought it was fascinating. Still wasn't into VWs at that point, but started getting Custom Car and Street Machine magazines when I was 11 (1988!) - I'd previously read all of Dad's CC mags from the '70s! Turned 17, knew I had to get some car that I could modify and not be FWD, but I couldn't insure the Mk2 Escort Super Sport I'd looked at so I had a look at a Beetle next to it. Ended up buying a bug that my Dad had found for a friend who wanted one, and although he sold his after a couple of years, I stuck with them and now wouldn't be without it. Sorry for the ramble! ;D

I got given one and the rest is history, although i just been given an Alpha GTA so may be a new future for my hobby ! :)

the blame for me lies at the feet of my late uncle how built and drove this in the 70's (he's the one in white  8) )
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v493/streetvw/uncleDavesbug2.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v493/streetvw/uncleDavesbug4.jpg)

It is partly due to my father.
When I was a kid, I assisted him while he was restoring his old Alfa Romeo (GT, Spider, Junior, Guillia, GTV and GTV6 - he only keeped the GTV6 that was restored only with NOS parts  :o), went with him in scrapyard to dismentle old Alfa, and went to vintage cars rallies. At a rallye (in 1991) I saw a peper mint 1966 cal look bug and said him I would like to build such a car later. At home, he said me to look in his vintage car litterature because he has some VW magazines (Some years before, he planned to buy a bug, but change his mind finding a Facel Vega).
So I found an old Hot VWs bought while he was in the USA for business in the mid 80's, and the number 26 of Super VW Magazine featuring a full report on the DKP and the Cal Look history. I was 9 and I only wanted a 70's style Cal Look. At this period, my father offers me Super VW Magazine every month. For my 12 th birthday, he offers me my 1st bug, a 1970 standard bug that I restored with him.
And for my 1st VW meeting, I met Keith Seume while he was promoting his California Look VW book at Saint Medard de Guizière and bought the book that really influence me.

I don't really know how I got into them in the beginning.  I never had family that were into them, but a step-grandfather that was into high-dollar 1938 Chevy hot rods (owned over 20) so I was around old/fast cars as a kid.  I always loved VW's and grew up on Herbie ;D  When I was in middle school, I started buying VW Trends and Hot VW's when ever I'd go to the store with my mom.  I'd read them over at school and draw pictures of my favorite cars that were featured.  I used to catch all kinds of crap from my friends, "why do you like BUGS???" "they're slow, ugly" etc...I think that helped motivate me to want one even more!  To prove them wrong

By the time I got into high school I had decided that it had to be an Oval and 2 months after getting my License, I found my current car.  I had no idea what I was getting into at the time and had no prior knowledge beside the hundreds of articles and books I had read.  But I had never actually put my hands on a type-1 motor before.  I was lucky enough to meet two good friends that were my age who also had custom VW's.  We helped each other out and worked on each other's cars all the time.  I also met Jim early on when he was at Buggy House and he was always the guy we went to for all the REAL questions  :)  Jim was a huge help to us all and I can honestly say that if it wasn't for him and my Buddy Gilbert early-on, I probably would've given up long ago. 

One of our neighbors daughters dated a guy with metallic blue Super Beetle (which must have been brand new then) when I was something like 4-5 years old, I remember staring those huge tail lights in awe.. When I was a teenager the Beetle was already too old and awkward to use as a first car and daily driver in our climate.

Fellow guy doing the military service had always bunch of Hot VWs and VW Trends with him, I borrowed my Popular Hot Rodding and Hot Rod magazines to him and got his VW magazines in exhange during those long/boring days in the Finnish army. I got interested in VWs but at that time the Volkswagens in local shows were quite different from those in American magazines, later I just started buying VW magazines at newsstands and sort of fell in love with the design of early Beetle and thought that they're cheap/easy to work on.. I had actually never sat in Beetle before I took the one that became my first Beetle to test drive.

1. Cheap to purchase(paid $800.00 in 1977 for my 67 sedan with a warranted rebuilt engine).
2. Cheap to gas.
3. Easy to work on.
4. Easy to modify.
5. Most important, my high school buddies were driving them.

Lems

Why?  Because they are cool!  ;D

For me, being 37, I remember them from the '70s and playing slug bug with my brother. 

My dad had a project Bug in the early 70's, I remember riding in the back seat and dropping a rag through a hole in the floorboard.... :o  I also remember the look of the pedal cluster in the car with no rubber pads....little metal bumps.  Don't know what became of that car though....

The cars are fun to work on, the parts are relatively cheap, they are very fun to drive and toss around, people tend to gravitate towards them at car shows, and they just evoke a warm feeling in general.    Plus, although I was not part of the Socal VW subculture in any way, I just love reading about what went on in the 60s and 70s and looking at pictures of both the street and race cars at the time.

If I ever get bored with my VW, I watch the Mark Herbert quaife video and it always gets me enthused again....

Wow I think your uncle was on to something there , love the supercharger and the kellys . All my uncle had was a moggy traveler

yep he really screwed me and my brothers up  ;D :P he did everything on that car built the engine, (the supercharger is a shorrocks unit meant for a 2.5 daimler but he addapted it with the help of Sydney Allard to fit his bug) he lowered the front (a little) and did all the paint and bodywork and then he crashed it! :-[

He also got us into drag racing to the extent that my brother now crews on a topfuel cars talk about messed up  ;D

Hey thanks Richard...always my pleasure to help you "kids" out.  ;D You guys ended up with some really fast shit!

PS that $20 for saying that nice stuff is in the mail. :-*

No problem Pa  ;)

PS. Chad from Import was only willing to send me $10, so you won the complements!  ;D

i guess i got into vws due to my father as well.
i knew his first car was a beetle, and i always charished that fact when i was into toy cars in my childhood.
when i started thinking about what car i would REALLY like to have, besides all the young-boy-ferrari-like-dreamcars, i decided i wanted a beetle as my first car, no doubt.
time neared that i would turn 18 to get my driving license i still was dreaming of my beetle and my older brother got his first car, which was a beetle(i like to say that he stole the idea that i had first, no offense bro, we got this far yet).
i got my first and current beetle like i dreamed to have one just like my father drove a beetle, and the coincidence is that i've got the same model as my father had.

so no tough stories, just a dream from my childhood about my heroic father. which turned into a dream to be more heroic with my beetle than my father was.

Like almost every other post, my dad is responsible. When I was born in 75, he had a 1966 Notchback with mild Cal-Look touch. It was dechromed, lowered front, poor boy cal look rubber (trim pulled from stock rubber) and 1800cc type 4 motor with a Solex 44 side draft. He sold it when I was 11 and bought a 68 bus and 70 ghia when I turned 13. One day I will own a tan 66 notch and finish it how my dad wanted his back in the day.