What A Short, Strange Truck It Was - Air-Cooled VW Pickups

It’s funny how it sometimes takes a while to recognize something familiar. In the mid-1980s, when my daily driver was a slightly hi-po’d 1972 VW Type 2, I was driving a work vehicle from the Detroit area to Toledo to pick up a part. As I drove down I-75 and got closer to Ohio, I noticed one Volkswagen Bus traveling north in the opposite direction — and then another. “That’s unusual,” I thought. By then air-cooled Vee Dubs weren’t terribly common, and *Transporters were less common than Beetles. Then a Vanagon passed by, but, as I said, this was the 1980s and Vanagons were still being sold new and didn’t think much about it until I saw a few more Type 2s, including some older split-windows. Was there a VW club convention going on? I once drove to Cincinnati and I passed a large group of MG enthusiasts on their way to a meet.

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1946 VW Beetle Factory Pickup With Fifth Wheel Car Hauling Trailer Discovered

Do I love the internet. I thought I’d seen every old VW oddity, but doing a google image search for “VW pickup” brings up this gem. I knew that in the early days the VW factory built a number of specialized vehicles to transport bodies and things around the grounds. But this goose neck fifth wheel trailer rig hauling another Beetle takes the cake. Another VW view of the same Volksamino follows:

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Curbside Classic Outtake: Get Shorty Edition

Now here’s a well-preserved flash from the past. VW kits of every possible permutation were the rage in the seventies and into the eighties. The Beetle’s construction lent itself superbly to the task. A few bolts released the body from the platform, which could also be quite easily cut and shortened. The resulting short bed pickup variation makes the perfect little hauler, like this one. Ride and handling? Don’t ask. Although this profile shows off its best side, there’s a bonus or two or even three in the other shots:

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  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.