There's not too much common ground between VWs and surf lifesaving.
Except cars and surf lifesavers will be butted up like sardines at the Mount Maunganui camping ground this week. And they'll be happily co-exisiting.
Sixty-two sites at the camp, the whole front half, will be overrun by VW enthusiasts who're in town for something called The Run to the Sun. Eighty classic Volkswagens in all, plus disciples. Then there are the surf lifesaving championships gobbling up the rest of the camp.
'Sitting in the sun at the beach, surrounded by the cars you love and a chilly bin of beer.” It's VW enthusiast Steve Cartwright's nirvana. 'There's not much wrong with a day like that.”
So what's the fascination with VWs, the people's automobile? '[I] Can't explain it,” says Steve. 'They are good little cars, iconic and people love them.”
'Or we just like breaking down and sitting on the side of the road,” he laughs.
There are some misconceptions about the stock in the Bay of Plenty Volkswagen Owners Club. 'There are some pretty high performance cars we have got going in there now. A few guys are racing and pulling 10-second quarter miles. They are not standard.” And neither are the prices standard, says this owner of a 1968 Kombi. It's his third VW.
'You can spend between $20,000 and $120,000 on a modified VW,” says Steve. 'One of our club members has just invested $80,000.”
He's just back from an Auckland event – The Bug Jam. There were 150 VWs at that event and some of them have been touring the Coromandel before dropping in for the local event.
There will be a show, a display at the Phoenix carpark between 10am and 2pm on Saturday. 'The surf lifesavers will be joining us with buckets and all proceeds will go to them.”
There'll be a party and prizegiving at Mexicali tomorrow night. Then 80 VWs will relocate to Memorial Park for a family day on Sunday.
'The guys are absolutely committed to VWs – the classics, the Kombis, bay windows and Beetles.”
Some interesting trivia about VWs: the idea for the ‘people's car' came from Adolf Hitler, who appointed Ferdinand Porsche to engineer a car that could carry two adults and three children, could travel at 100km/h and was affordable.
Ferdinand did a good job. There were 21,529,464 Beetles built between 1938 and 2003.
1 comment
That's a lot of money
Posted on 05-03-2016 16:03 | By Watchdog
for a Dub. My first car was shared with a mate on a camping holiday in Australia in 1968. The van was a 1959 standard model Dub that had been converted to single bunks on either side of the vehicle. If you hit a significant bump at 60mph it used to get steering wobbles, which was a bit unnerving. The fix was to apply the brake and slow down. Eventually a rag got left in the engine compartment and while driving along, it got sucked into the air intake and overheated the motor, cracking the head. That was the end of my love affair with VW's.I bought out my mates share and traded it in for a 1964 Ford Zephyr. A much bigger car. Possiby not as much fun but a more comfortable vehicle.
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