Yesterday I picked up a 1952 standard beetle. The standards had no chrome, a special headliner, cable brakes, non-adjustable seats, a non-synchromesh transmission, and no accessories. Standards were foreign market cars only and never brought to the US. This car is also a late 1952 so it is a zwitter (oval window dash and split rear window ). The fact that it is a standard and a zwitter makes the car very rare.
It all started about a month ago when I was visiting some local vw people. Through talking it came up that one knew about a very early beetle in a junk yard. We figured that the very early beetle would turn out to be a late model once we got there. After talking to the owner on the phone we decided to go and check it out.
When we arrived at the yard we found a 1952 beetle sitting amongst many old American cars. The owner told us that it was a 1952 body on a 1966 chassis and it would need a specially constructed vin to be driven. He also said we couldn’t buy it but instead had to put in a bid and he would get back to us.
When I got home and looked at some of the pictures and called upon some experts on thesamba they concluded that the car was the rarer standard model (I think from Sweden) and I determined that it was not on a 1966 chassis but the original.
We continued to call the guy once a week and he said the same “Well I don’t know if I can sell it and I am not ready yet maybe next week” Last Saturday when we were on vacation in Boston we called the guy and he said that it all needed to be gone now and that he was going to junk it all. He told us if we were there Monday we might be able to get it.
When we got to the yard we first had to move a car and piles of aluminum to make a path to get it out of the yard. The car has some rust in the rockers, passenger side floor, and the rear luggage area but is decent for a car sitting outside in Pa for almost 40 years.
I plan on doing a complete restoration bringing the interior and exterior back to factory specs but beating the car with the lowering stick to the point where the pan lays on the ground. I think that I will build a old speed 36hp engine with a hot cam and my 356 crank along with dual carbs giving me some extra displacement and double the power.
Enjoy, looks like a fun project and definitely a good find!
