This bug is listed on craigslist in Cameron Park, California for $3,800. It was on blocks from 1986 until recently when the seller bought it from the original owner. It looks like it won’t take much work to make this a nice driver. The hubcaps are a bit rusty, but otherwise it looks like a typical old beetle you would have seen on the streets in the 1980s.
This VW looks pretty nice and complete inside. It looks like all it needs is a good cleaning but the vinyl seats could be brittle with age.
This old VW looks pretty good from this end as well. It runs and drives but does not stop. The engine was said to have been rebuilt in the ’80s. A picture of the engine would have been nice. The brakes will need some work and it will need the usual tuneup and carburetor work. There’s said to be rust under the battery, so there’s rust in the floor pan, and rust bubbling under the paint in one spot. The spare tire well, heater ducts and pan will need a close look for rust. As always, there’s no telling what you might find upon inspection but this is a black plate California VW and it looks hopeful. I would just do the mechanical work, fix the rust under the battery and the rusty bit under the paint and drive it like it is. Others might want to restore it completely. How about you?
I would repair the rust, fix the brakes, tune up and fluid change, clean it up and drive away a happy man.
Nope, just fix the rust issues, get it safe, clean it up a bit and drive it. Bugs are cool.
When did Barn Finds start requiring logging in to see the Craigslist link?
I’m already subscribed.
Otherwise I wouldn’t be seeing this…
I got the same password request and it says no account with this email, which is where the link was sent to???
Where is the brown bug? all I see is grey/white?
Use your imagination I guess.
We don’t require logins to view craigslist, the link is just bad. We will get that fixed asap. Thanks guys!
Sorry about that guys! The link has been fixed and will now take you to the craigslist ad.
Pretty decent. Horn ring is not broken like most. I’d look at the heater channels and the rear bumper is aftermarket.
66 is the last year for 6 volt, fluted headlamps and the only year for the 1300 in the U.S. market.
Love the shape / fit / finish / originality / black tags and simplicity – wouldn’t drive one to the shops, tho’
I remember when these 1300 cc Beetles were new and exciting. ONE HUNDRED more CCs! Wow! Only 4 or 5 thousand more to go to get up even with the big boys who had a V8 under the hood.
Of course that wasn’t going to happen, but these were special with VW owners, who thought the automotive world revolved around what came out of Wolfsburg. And amazingly, some VW owners still do. Now, I wonder how many billion DM VW Group is up to now in earnings writedowns. But getting back to this car…..
It was the ’60s, the time of Euro vehicles that were advertised in all the big magazines like ‘LIFE’ in cool, self-deprecating ads that made fun of the vehicle that was being advertised, but that moved ‘product’ just because the ads were clever and self deprecating. And because the cars were real good on gas.
This car looks pretty good, and if it really is from dry Sacramento that’s even better, because the limited rust should be fairly easy to fix. But I would still take a close look underneath anyway since that bubbling in front of the left rear wheel might be the start of some serious perforation.
Dolphin, I wouldn’t lose too much sleep worrying about how many EUROs VW are having to write down. I suspect its not too much more than ash tray change to them….. I quite like Bugs like this one. Don’t see too many left on the roads down here in Australia but it makes my day when I do see one come by. Nice find, hope whoever buys it cherishes it……..
If you got a car that gets 60 to 80 mpg with descent power and compare it to just about any diesel truck on the road, by volume alone the VW is putting out a fraction of total emissions. IMHO we have just about reached the end of the line on how much mass we can push down the road on a gal. of fuel. So they lied about the emissions they also built a great little car that gets down the road on less fuel than most, the emission numbers at the tail pipe might be off but in terms of total volume there better than most if I had one of these VW diesels I’d take my rebates and keep right on driving it. You know your lawn mower gets terrible emission readings too but you only put 2gal. of gas threw it each year. This VW thing is way over blown and is proof that if we go any leaner on fuel, power loss will be very noticeable and engine life will suffer. We will be back to the 70’s engines that have to be larger by volume to get the same job done they will be slugs. Fact is it take so much energy to push so much mass down the road and more importantly up a hill. Rant completed.
Said better than I did…….makes my mind squishy just thinking about it.
I don’t follow the Dieselgate fraud too closely but here is one estimate I saw:
“….the potential $87 billion in losses would be almost 7 times the German automaker’s net profit for 2014. The $87 billion figure from Credit Suisse includes costs related to owner re-imbursements, civil-criminal cases and fixing the emission problem. However, according to Credit Suisse, the biggest cost for VW would be to compensate for the ‘loss of value’ to the owners of the affected diesel cars, and this could be as high as $37 billion.” [source: oilprice.com]
Not exactly chump change.
It also calls into question the judgement of Ferdinand Piech, whose hubris is said to be of massive proportions. Anyone who would perpetrate a fraud like that against the US government on an international stage has no idea what he is doing.
I’m not losing any sleep over it because I have never owned VW stock and never will. But I’ll bet a lot of VW stockholders have lost a lot of sleep over this.
Those figures may well be correct but it does not take into account cash reserves of which you can sure there will be huge mountains of. I don’t think the share price has tumbled all that much to be honest. Frankly it’s all really a case of way too much conflicted outrage. Is anybody really caring about it. In Australia VW sales are largely unaffected, save for small dip when the scandal broke. Also if anybody believes VW were the only ones doing this, I’ve got a bridge they might be interested in…..
So let me get this straight……
VW intentionally rigs their “clean diesels” to pass emissions tests only during an emissions test session, but then rigs the software so the diesel engine spews out oxides of nitrogen that damage peoples’ lungs all the rest of the time the car is being driven…
…all so VW drivers can have peppy performance from their dirty “clean diesels”, and so VW Group Chairman Ferdinand Piech can feel good because he heads the largest carmaker in the world.
And not only do some people not care about that, but they actually think it’s OK based on ideas about “conflicted outrage”—whatever that is—plus the assumption, with no evidence at all, that other carmakers were/are also perpetrating a similar fraud?
I got no use for a company that commits a massive fraud and then lies through its teeth about it, all so that some supremely arrogant old German guy can feel good because he finally headed the largest car company in the world.
I would not touch a VW Group product if it were given to me. It amazes me the lengths to which people will handwave Piech’s and VW Group’s lies and frauds away.
Let’s be clear: Chairman Piech led VW Group in the largest fraud in automotive history. That might be OK with you, but I don’t spend my hard earned money on fraudulent products that send lung damaging chemicals into the air that people I care about have to breathe, all so I can get peppy performance and great fuel economy from a fraudulent engine.
Shame on him and on anyone who handwaves Piech’s fraud away just because they imagine that other carmakers were doing the same thing.
Let’s put a 25 MPH zone on a 65 MPH highway…….another simple way to understand the emissions standards. It is all about money.
The VW worship that some people have in spite of the admitted fraud that VW Group perpetrated on its loyal customers and shareholders is something to behold.
It makes me wonder what Piech and VW Group would have to do to lose that loyalty, if outright lies, fraud, and large financial penalties and losses didn’t do it.
Seller states no title in the listing, so I wonder how much that would be to overcome…
150.00 to a lein sale company
The 1300 was probably the best bug engine built. It was an A block with all the lat upgrades without the heat and extra power of a 1600 dual port top end to tear it apart. The carburetor acted like a governor so it couldn’t be over driven and it got a lot better fuel economy than the larger 1500-1600 engines.
1 owner with no title ?….it was nice until I saw that.
I remember restoring several bugs back in the 70’s. They were likely the easiest cars to work on since the model T Fords. I always preferred the oval window models. These cars were not very fast but they were a fun drive, and very strong for there size. I rolled one once several times in a corn field then drove it away. A friend of mine was rear ended by a truck and pushed into a Lincoln and she walked away too. We still see them on the road more frequently than one might expect.
FYI–isn’t much of a big deal for a car to be advertised in California as a “black-plate car” since the plates can be bought from a swap meet or whatever and registered to the car just as the early plates are allowed.. (Prior to 2008 I believe-only the pre-’62 plates could be used as such). The seller needs to show some sort of proof that the plates have long been belonging to the car in my opinion to make those claims to anyone seeking that bit of provenance.. (Especially with no title and claims to have bought from the first owner…)
So few people know what’s behind “Diesel Gate”. It was really an engineering dilemma. Prior to a change in how these cars were tested, they passed all emission tests with flying colors. Then CARB and later the EPA decided to change the test method. All of a sudden the cars couldn’t meet the emissions new method for testing their cars. Then politics and lawyers got in the way and you see the results.
I’ve never had a VW, but I think this is the best style. With the proper paperwork the car can be towed to AAA office or DMV and VIN verified and new title issued to the buyer. Proper paperwork being a statement of facts and request for lost title signed by the last registered owner. Since the car has both black plates it shouldn’t be a problem to retain them for the car.
When dealing with rust issues in these old bugs, don’t forget to take a look at the shock towers, especially where they are welded into the ends of upper and lower suspension beams. The entire assembly is not terribly difficult to replace, but it does take time and hard work. https://www.google.com/search?q=vw+beetle+front+suspension+diagram&espv=2&biw=1234&bih=666&tbm=isch&imgil=9jdzZ3M6pjNRWM%253A%253BbFZxaML_VM2KDM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fchircoestore.com%25252Ftech_articles%25252F%25253Fp%2525253D231&source=iu&pf=m&fir=9jdzZ3M6pjNRWM%253A%252CbFZxaML_VM2KDM%252C_&usg=__ULN2vjoOcniCZgX5DuW_Y_lc4MM%3D&ved=0ahUKEwjSrun5reLQAhWM8oMKHXouBRIQyjcIMw&ei=kSVIWJKiCozljwT63JSQAQ#imgrc=9jdzZ3M6pjNRWM%3A By the way, the best book I ever found for dealing with every aspect of old bugs is John Muir’s “How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive”
Jim,
I definitely agree—John Muir’s book is one of the best shop books ever published, and not just for VW beetles. It has all kinds of information about how to deal with problems of old cars, cars with rusted-on parts, cheap but good fixes, and so on. I still go back to it sometimes for problems I am having in the shop despite the fact that I sold the last VW I owned many decades ago.
Mark S, on your comment to me above:
The issue never was “total emissions”. As I already said on here, the issue with the VW fraud was **oxides of nitrogen**, which can seriously damage lung tissue. Now, you might not mind getting your lungs damaged, and want to handwave it away by burying it in total emissions, but then you fail to understand the point, or the depth of VW Group’s fraud.
There’s no easy way to say this, and sorry to have to contradict Dave Wright who also misses the point, but the issue with VW Group’s fraud is that VW diesels put out excessive NOX while **18 wheel and other diesel trucks DO NOT put out excessive NOX**.
That’s because it has been law since about 2010 for trucks—including big 18-wheelers—to be equipped with tanks full of urea, which is slowly injected into the exhaust system to chemically get rid of NOX. Diesel powered cars also have to use urea injection to eliminate NOX.
The fact is, the fraudulent diesel VW cars actually put out a lot of NOX, while big diesel trucks don’t because of the urea the trucks inject into their exhaust.
Here is VW’s fraud: There wasn’t enough space in the small VW vehicle bodies to fit a urea tank, pump and pipes for urea injection. VW Group would have had to redesign the bodies of their small diesel cars and trucks to accommodate those parts, but that would have meant stopping production and lots of expense and bother, lost sales, etc, etc.
So instead VW omitted the urea injection and got their vehicles certified on NOX emissions fraudulently by illegal software manipulation so they could keep on selling the same diesel vehicles without the urea injection.
None of this is rocket science. And “this VW thing” is NOT way overblown. It’s amazing to me that any company anywhere in the known universe would take on the US Government the way that VW Group did. It was a very, very stupid thing to do, besides being fraud on a massive scale.
Trivialize it if you want, but your vague comments are simply wrong. You do not seem to understand the facts. Although you might not care about NOX in the air you breathe, the least that can be said about this case is that it was amazingly stupid of VW Group to think that they could get away with this.
All this stuff is readily available online. That’s how I found out about it. Try Google, it’s a great resource. And no, I don’t work for the EPA, or for any other part of the US government.
I bought a new ’66 in December of 1965; sunroof, gas heater, stainless trim, $2020 down the road. It had a much better heater but had mechanical problems that my ’57, ’61, ’64 and ’65 never had.
I loved the gas heaters…..they would burn more fuel than the car sometimes. I remember several times parking a car in the winter time, someone forgetting to shut off the heater and coming out to a car out of gas. But they were shure nice when they worked.
Hello, I have a Sea Sand 1966 bug. Bought in St Louis new for $1,689.00.
Basic bug no radio, stuck transitor radio above grab handle passenger side.
Still have here in FL and occasionally show with a few winners. Having horn problems right now. Brown wire at horn ring but black wire coming out at steering coupler. Wire does not want to come out of shaft but I will eventurally figure it out.