My first attempt at a restoration happened way back in 1983/1984, our junior and senior year of high school. A group of about 6 of us were involved with the rebuild of this Beetle and most of the others involved were also Beetle owners. This was my first Beetle, it was actually my second. My first was purchased the previous summer with money that I had earned by cutting grass in the neighborhood. I paid for half of it and my parents paid the other half. A total of 500 dollars! I remember driving it home and looking at the road through the missing parts of the floor pan. It was a disaster, but it was mine. The idea was to “fix up” this old Beetle and give it new life. It was a 1972 Super Beetle. My friends and I spent a couple of months working out a game plan to bring new life to this fun little car. However, it was quickly apparent that this poor little car was just too far gone to bring back to life. It would cost way to much money to fix and finding somebody to take on the task would be impossible. Through luck and fate, I was able to acquire another ’72 Beetle from a junk yard that had a much better body, but was pretty much missing everything else. (that’s a whole other story) So the idea was to take the junk yard body and transfer everything off the running Beetle to it. Simple, right? So on a Friday after school, we acquired the junk yard donor, got it to my parents house and the work began. Three days later on Monday morning, I drove the FrankenBeetle to school. My friends and I, along with my dad, spent countless hours that weekend building one Beetle out of two. It was certainly an accomplishment. The next few winter months were spent doing body work and finally having it painted at the vocational school the following spring. It was a great project, it was a great time that I’ll cherish forever!

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