Type III x 3

In conversation (e-conversation anyway) with a fellow ACVWer recently, I soon found myself wandering in nostalgia for the first VWs I ever owned, this trio of Type IIIs.Not to toot my own horn, but in retrospect I think it took some guts for a small-town (Stanton Nebraska, pop. ~1600) high school guy to drive a partly pink car. Such was Gretchen, a 1973 Type III Fastback whom I purchased sometime in the Spring of 1991. I spotted her at a dealership in Valley, on the way to a Screaming Trees show in Omaha with my younger brother Bill and our friend Donny. The show didn't happen--tour bus wreck--but the car did and I've never really looked back, Rabbit and Subaru notwithstanding. I blew up the engine (sent a rod right through the case) in the Summer of 1991, got a rebuilt one that Summer, and fatally crashed her into a 1990 LeBaron that Winter. The white car in the background, at right, was my first car, "Yvette", a 1977 Ford Mustang II.I was shopping around for a Squareback to put the freshish engine into and stumbled across Anne in Council Bluffs very late in 1991 (it was the week after Christmas). What a wonderful car. She holds two distinctions for me: the fastest I've ever driven an ACVW (100mph), and the best mileage I've ever gotten in any car (38mpg). If you've ever wondered how many bottles of Schmidt big mouths you can safely fit in the trunk of a 1970 Type III, I can tell you: 96. She could give Ludwig a run for his money as far as adventures go (the two were acquainted, actually). Anne was mortally rusty in all the typical Type III places though, and sacrificed much of herself for the next car.Freida was put together with much love in the Spring of 1996 by myself and 01Melcher. She was red when I got her and that paint job was my choice, applied by 01Melcher. It was pointed out to us later that the stripe is on the wrong side, as racing stripes serve the practical function for the driver of reducing glare off the hood. Who knew? Appearances aside, Freida was something of a delicate creature and I never had her really dialed in and running properly. Plus I didn't entirely know what I was doing (still don't, but I'm a little better). But when she was running well, she was as fine a car as one could hope to drive. If you've ever wondered how many 10-lb. cases of hamburgers you can safely fit into the back of a 1967 Type III Squareback, I can tell you: 35. Freida met a deer in the Spring of 1998, which was pretty much the end of her, decent Type III replacement body panels in Nebraska being non-existent. I drove her for a while afterwards with a severely bent passenger-side door and a blue front fender from a '68, but the engine gave up a few months later and so did I.

R.I.P., ladies.