The story all starts here with this 1973 Superbeetle.
Actually it starts about 5 years before this picture was taken, when my Mom drove me down to St. Louis, MO., to purchase it and drive it back to Chicago. It was my first car, my dream car (really I always wanted a Karmann Ghia but in the midwest none existed any longer. So the beetle was a logical runner-up). I drove it all throughout college. I even drove it out to Arizona in August of 1995, but 5 winters of Illinois road salt had taken a toll. I junked it in Sept. 1995, after the engine started to fall out. Here's me visiting it at Hex Auto Salvage in Cottonwood in March of 1996.
It was all very tragic and caused many tears, and for the next few years or so, I tried to forget all about vintage Volkswagens. It is like some kind of insanity that takes over your life! But then in 1998, when we were living in Jerome, we'd see a sweet yellow 1973 Karmann Ghia cruise past our front porch each day. Then one day we saw it parked uptown with a For Sale sign in the window. The rest is history. Since then, we've put nearly 100,000 miles on the Ghia, taking it to Chicago, Mexico, California, Utah, Nevada.
It's like my beetle came back to me, but as something better. I will never sell it. |
