About the car

This is an interesting story from the get-go about this car. It's a 62 bug. Purchased in Germany, in 62 by  my parents. They were over there, having a good time, and decided to pick up a bug. They drove it all over Europe, and got to import it back to N. America as a used car, since they put some mileage on it (smart.) It was on a boat to NYC, and they picked it up on the East Coast after the trip, and proceeded to drive it across the USA to California (stopping in Vermont, Indiana, Missouri and many other places on the way.) 

It's been in Southern California until July 7 or so, when it got towed up to NoCal, where I have it now. It's the car I learned how to drive a manual stick with. I drove it to San Diego once, from Long Beach, when I was maybe 17, because I was bored and had never driven the San Diego Freeway all the way to San Diego. 

My dad used it primarily as his daily driver to work, and it did a great job doing that. It also doubled as a truck, as he could pop the ragtop, and bring home long 2x4's, pipe, pvc, etc with that car. The back seat went down, and he had a fair amount of room in back. 

He had painted some eyes inside of the  zeros on the license plate, but got pulled over one day and was told to get rid of the eyes and make it blue (it's an old blue/yellow plate.) It would have had a black/yellow Cali plate, if not for the personalized plate.

What I remember most about this car was driving to baseball practice. Somehow, the smell of the brickdust, fresh grass, my mitt/bat (I would poke the handle of the bat thru the hole in the back of my mitt, between the back strap and the fingers, in that open area, then slide the mitt up to the fat part of my bat, where it would stay), and the inside of that old car mix together and always remind me of baseball practice. To a smaller extent, baseball games, but I think we took that car to more practices than games. I don't know why I remember it that way. 

The car had been taken care off pretty well. Dad kept a little notebook diary of all repairs from  the day he got it. It's fun to see entries like, "May 64, new battery $12." The entries stopped in '97, about the time dad retired. 

The bug didn't get regular driving after that. Especially after the carbuerator caught fire in 98. He fixed it, but didn't drive so regularly after that. 

The folks (after almost eBaying the ol' bug on many occasion), decided they would sell it to a local who liked to refurbish old cars. When I heard that, (after assuming that if they ever wanted to get rid of the old bug, that they'd give me first shot), I mentioned that I wanted to do  a conversion to make the old bug a electric vehicle. I knew that a lot of people were doing this, and it sounded like an awesome idea.

I've only read this, so I dunno if it's all that true. You read a lot of things. Like ridiculous EV conversion blogs. But I read that half of the pollution put into the atmosphere by any car, is from the actual manufacturing of that car. The rest of the pollution is from the exhaust, grease/oil emission stuff. Probably creation of new parts. I dunno. But I figured if I can keep this thing on the road, 1) I'm helping with this 'pollution thing" (been driving a biodiesel Mercedes for a couple years, so 'I care'), 2) keeping an old friend in the family, 3) finding a new interest that'll cause all sorts of inconveniences in my life. Rock on!