Danville Street Sighting - 1977 Volkswagen Beetle Convertible Champagne Edition

For years I resisted photographing Beetles. Volkswagen cranked out 21 million of the things and a lot of them are still puttering around in various conditions. Our first featured Bug was a customized one made to look like a 1937 Ford. Since then I've wanted to find a Karmann convertible Beetle, since those are less common than their regular sedan siblings (just 331,847 built). I got lucky with this one, which turns out to be a 1977 Champagne special edition.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1971 Volkswagen 411 Wagon

I've been doing features recently that correspond to certain odd-numbered milestones, such as street sighting features #403 and 404, which looked at a Peugeot 403 and 404, respectively. So as this is feature number 411, let's look at a 1971 Volkswagen 411 Wagon.

Oakland Street Sighting - 1970 Volkswagen Beetle 1500 Wunderbug

I told myself I'd never feature a Beetle. Twenty-one million of the things were built and a goodly number of them are still on the roads in various conditions. The Volkswagen Beetle is still common, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area. And for that reason, the Bug was never that special to me. Some of you in the rustbelt who never see them, or VW enthusiasts, may feel otherwise. My father once owned a '71 Super Beetle and thought it was a wonderfully fun little car.

The Beetle is such a simple and versatile platform, it's excellent as a starting point for dune buggies like the Meyers Manx and kit cars ranging from fiberglass Porsche 356 replicas to the Bradley GT. There is a tuner culture that gave rise to the Cal Look, Volksrod and Baja Bug. And then there's this, a faux-1937 Ford coupe called the Wunderbug.

Danville Street Sighting - 1973 Volkswagen Type 181 Thing

Back in May I featured a 1974 Volkswagen Thing from Alameda, the place Murilee Martin of The Truth About Cars (formerly of Jalopnik) dubbed The Island That Rust Forgot. Now we're looking at another Thing, which I think is a 1973 model.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1970 Volkswagen Type 2 Bus Pickup

There are a few Volkswagen Type 2 Bus pickups already on this site. All of them, however, have been the early T1 model, or "Splittie". In 1968 the T2 was introduced, called the "Bay" Bus for its large curved windshield. The pickup versions of these Buses sold relatively well through the 1960s, but were curbed sharply by the U.S. Chicken Tax, a 25% tariff on imported light trucks. That tax all but eliminated VW pickups from the American market in the 1970s. The passenger vans were not affected and sold in large numbers well into the end of the decade, paving the way for the T3 Vanagon, T4 Eurovan (and later the T5 Transporter not sold in the States). The VW Rabbit also offered a pickup version, but for the American market it was built in Pennsylvania and avoided the tax.

Alameda Street Sighting - 1974 Volkswagen Type 181 Thing

Thing.

There's something wonderfully silly about naming a car "Thing". What is that thing? Yes. That's what it is. Unless you're in the UK or some other country, in which case your VW Type 181 might be labeled a Trekker or Safari or what have you. Safari? Where I come from, that's a GMC van or a Pontiac wagon, not a Volkswagen. While that name may be just as apropos for an open-topped four-door car based on the WWII-era Kubelwagen that would look at home on the African plains, it doesn't sound nearly as playful as calling the boxy little vehicle the Thing.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1963 Volkswagen Type 2 Bus Pickup

The VW Bus pickup seems to come in two distinct varieties: Custom lowrider or beaten work truck. I don't see many that are stock, and even fewer that are in this stage of degradation. This is one of the newer Bus pickups I've seen, and yet it's in arguably the worst condition of any I've seen on the street. Found in the Mission District, this old single-cab Splittie has been through the wringer.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1958 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia

Old European cars frustrate me. I hate when I can't correctly place a vehicle's year, or sometimes even the decade of manufacture, because it doesn't have little superficial details so commonly employed on American cars to keep them fresh year after year. Volkswagen used to pride themselves on how little they altered the styling of their cars, and that brings us to this early Karmann Ghia.
The VW Type 14 Karmann Ghia was produced for 19 years, beginning in 1955 and ending in 1974. Like all Volkswagen products of this era, the Ghia was changed just enough to comply with safety regulations and make the car function better. And rightfully so - the car was penned by Ghia and hand-built by Karmann, with a level of style and quality that earned it praise from a number of sources.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1960 Volkswagen Type 2 double cab pickup

I have a mild interest in old VW pickups, mainly because they're so much less common than their van or "station wagon" versions. I don't even photograph most of the garden variety Type 2 Microbuses unless they're in mint condition or at least visually interesting. Most of them bore me these days. The pickups, however, with their novel hinged bed sides, are an unusual footnote in truck history. Interestingly, this VW predates the "Chicken Tax" that served to curtail sales of imported light trucks to the US (and did, quite effectively in the case of later VW pickups).

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1973 Volkswagen 412

Third in my collection of San Francisco cars photographed and featured by both myself and by my friend Colin Stacy of The Automotive Way, is this 1973 Volkswagen 412.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1964 Volkswagen Type 3 1500 Notchback

I've never understood Volkswagen tuners. It seems like most VeeDubs have one or two preferred "looks" with little variation among them. Most modern customized VWs I see are slammed to the ground, rolling on BBS lace wheels with stretched tires, negative camber and smoked light lenses. Many are debadged, sporting roof racks and fart can mufflers. For some reason a recent trend seems to be a rusted hood on an otherwise shiny car.

Castro Valley Street Sighting - 1961 Volkswagen Type 2 Bus pickup

Very rarely in the United States will you find a Volkswagen Type 2 pickup. Thanks to the so-called "chicken tax" of 1963, which put heavy tariffs on light trucks imported to the US (because France and West Germany put a 25% tax on US chicken imports to their countries), vehicles such as the VW Bus/Transporter pickup and cargo van variants were rarely worth the trouble of importing since the cost was so high. The only alternative was to pass the cost on to the consumer, and people didn't want to pay 25% more for the same vehicle, so they simply bought an American-made truck or van instead. VW Kombi Buses were classified as passenger cars and marketed as station wagons, so they weren't subject to the chicken tax. The chicken tax is still in effect for any foreign-made light truck imported as a fully assembled vehicle.

Best of the Rest 2: Vantastic

1963-67 Volkswagen Type 2 Microbus, Dublin

1965 Chevrolet Sportvan, San Francisco

1969 Dodge A108 Sportsman Family Wagon, San Francisco

1968-70 Chevrolet ChevyVan, San Francisco

1987 Nissan Van, San Ramon

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1972 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia

Okay, this one was a tough call. Almost nobody can look at this and say they've never seen a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. They're still all over the place and a lot of them are in good shape. This isn't even a particularly old example, in fact it is one of the newest models. It's most likely a 1972 or 1973 model, and the Karmann Ghia was discontinued in 1974.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1973 Volkswagen Squareback

Most station wagons are conventional designs with a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout and four doors and a rear hatch. In Europe, that formula is sometimes different. Some companies, such as Volkswagen and Fiat, built a number of cars with rear-engine layouts. European cars were also generally smaller than American cars, so two-door wagons (and some sportier wagons with lower rooflines, often called shooting brakes) were fairly common. Some two-door wagons included the Opel Kadett and Volvo 1800ES. Domestic two-door wagons used to be common in the US, often as lower-priced alternatives to their larger four-door stablemates. Compact wagons such as the Studebaker Lark were common in two-door form. But after about 1965, domestic two-door wagons had all but disappeared, leaving the niche to European imports. And of those imports, none was quite as ubiquitous and popular as the Volkswagen Type 3 Squareback.

Castro Valley Street Sighting - 1980 Volkswagen Dasher

If any company doing business in the US at the dawn of the 1980s had small cars down to a science, it had to be Volkswagen. VW helped put the world on wheels with its Type 1 (Beetle), Type 2 (Microbus), Type 3 (Fastback, Notchback and Squareback). But even the People's Car had to have a top model, and in 1974 the Passat (German for "Trade Wind") was born. It was available in a variety of body styles including a two or four-door sedan, a three or five-door hatchback, and a station wagon. In North America the first generation of Passats were marketed as the Dasher between 1974 and 1981. Following the model's refresh for 1982, the name was changed to Quantum, and then, in 1986, to Passat. It remains Volkswagen's large-midsize sedan in the American market.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1968 Volkswagen 1600TL

I've always thought there was something inherently cool about the Volkswagen Type 3. For one thing, it isn't a [Type 1] Beetle. I've seen just about every different variety of Beetle one can imagine, and it's just too generic for me. I'm not wild about the [Type 2] Microbus either, unless it's something rare like a late-50s 21-window model or a pickup. But the Type 3, with its 2-door "Squareback" wagon, fastback coupe and notchback sedan body styles, is the classic VW that holds my interest most. A sporty roadster, the Type 34 Karmann Ghia, was also based on the Type 3 platform.