Pelican Parts Forums - Winter beater

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That's concours for Wash DC

The classic $8.00 car. I grew up with tons of those.

Disposable cars are fun. Go out and do some donuts and blast through snowbanks for yuks!

One of the most fun cars I ever had was my $400 e30 BMW airport/winter car, that came with fresh blizzacks. Ended up making money on that car....twice. Girl hit me driving to work. Her insurance co gave me $2500 for my car, since it was "totaled" for that price, that included the buy-back. Put about $100 worth of eBay parts on it to make it drivable. Drove another 30k miles with it. The alternator crapped out at point, I took the old one to autozone. The guy working there said "oh, you have our lifetime model...let me get you a free replacement..." Ha! Ended up selling the car for $500 some time later. Kinda miss it!

The best beater car for us was a 71 VW Super Beetle. Needed paint, but it was an almost rust free car, I couldn't sell it because it was a SB.

Wife needed a car for work, so I said how about the SB and she got 8 years out of that car.
Got it from a customer that I had built a performance engine for a few years earlier. By selling the HP engine (1904cc) the car was free, I had a stock engine kicking around and stuck it in.
I was surprised she would keep driving it, because at least once a year she would require a bum start. It would fail to start due to salt would kill the starter connections, but she just loved the cash it was saving us. The end came when it was too rusted out and she admitted that her days of driving a sketchy winter car were over.

She still loves old VW's and drives my '67 bus and bug quite often. Our Porsche 914 is actually her car, she bought it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark Henry (Post 8979218)

Great story, I guess we all had a favourite beater or two in days gone by.

Quote:

Originally Posted by yellowperil (Post 8979328)

Great story, I guess we all had a favourite beater or two in days gone by.

Thanks the funny thing was my very first car at 16 yrs old, or should I say mom's car that I totally beat the crap out of, was a 1971, orange VW super beetle. The doppleganger to the one in the story that my wife would drive 20 years later.

Beetles have been in my life since my oldest brothers and dads 1966/67, from about 1980 to '87 I didn't have a beetle, but I've always had one since.