I enjoy reading the problems members of the forum have with their T's. It is amazing how the mechanical bugs are solved to keep the machine operating.

That is a cool pic. Lemme tell ya, back "in the day" the VW bug lived up to it's namesake. Ours was in the repair shop more than it wasn't. Yes, they seemed to run forever,(with a lot of help) but basically they were a piece of crap. And you froze to death in them in the winter.

Yea, I remember so well the day I was shoved into the back of the neighbors plymouth duster by my mom and dad for the ride to the Henderson Volkswagen dealer in Charlotte in early 1975. We went into the showroom and my dad took the keys to a new Beetle "magron" spelling.Metallic blue Had the Am-Fm radio and sun roof. It was that or a Vega as he had to drive alot to work.
In the 2 years he drove that #*# car, the valves had to be adjusted several times, dimmer switch went bad, had no power.JUNK.
He traded it for a 6 cylinder 77 chevy pickup and drove it over 300,000 miles.Yes it will still crank today.

A T is much better in my opinion.

It helped to live in so cal.
and to duct tape the glove box shut and give your grandma a heavy blanket when you traveled back to eastern Nebraska.

I still own a vw bug, an all original 66. i love them. Keep it full of oil and tuned up, it will run a long time

I currently have a 72 super beetle and a 69 dune buggy with a vw chassis under it. My kids love them but not as much as the T. If you have half a brain the old air-cooled VW"s are easy to keep going with regular maintenance. You can pull the engine in less than 20 minutes.

VW bugs is where I learned to tinker on my Model T! Like them both, wish I could not afford a pre 1968 bug.

I've had two 60's VW's as my daily drivers for close to 20 years. The current '66 is a complete eyesore but the $$$ I save by not having a car payment and working on it myself means the house is almost paid off, I have a decent 401k going and can afford the luxury of a Model T.
When the house is paid off, I'm getting something with a real heater and A/C.
Works for me.

Best regards.

On the road in Sinaloa, 1974.

My 1968 beetle is the only new car I ever bought. A few years ago it suffered an engine fire, so it's out of service until I have time to fix it. As Tim observed, winter heat was its Achilles heel. On a long trip you might get warmed up about the time you got where you were going. It's remarkable that a country which gets as cold as Germany would come up with such a lousy excuse for a heater.

Funny that people with a love for a vehicle as persnickety as a Model T would look at
a VW bug as anything different. They were as basic as a T and made no bones about it.
Why does anyone expect them to be something different ? I would never expect my TT
to have good winter heat, tire smokin' raw power, or even much driver/passenger comfort.
It is what it is. If I wanted seat warmers, TV screens, and auto navigation, I'd buy some
modern POS with all the aesthetic character of a turd or bar of soap.

I remember my Aunt letting me borrow her beetle for the summer after i graduated High School. I was broke, and my project muscle car was in a million pieces in the garage with no money to put it back together. It was bright orange with one of those clutches that was operated by the shifter knob, and i have to admit it was a blast to drive even though you didn't want any of your friends, or girls to see you in it.

I had a 65 VW square back wagon with a gasoline heater. Instant heat but you had to keep moving because of the smoke it made.

I remember riding home from South Dakota for Christmas in a friend's '68 Beetle. A few miles into our journey, the windshield began to frost over. He asked me to turn on the defroster and pointed to the ice scraper that was sitting on the floor.

I don't understand the badmouthing of the Beetles. My dad had five in a row. Bought the first one new in 1953 and got a new one every five years. The last one, a '74 Super with Autostick, I kept. In all those years there was only one that had to have an engine repair. It seemed there was a batch of either tappets or push rods with poor heat treat.
The 1928 FIAT he had before the Beetles had thermosiphon cooling, like the T, and no heater at all. The Beetle was a big improvement, and keeping it comfortable in the winter in Norway was no problem. All you have to do is crack a vent window and drive in 3rd gear to keep the revs up and the fan pumping a good volume of air.

I have owned a VW pretty much my entire driving life, from 16 to my current 55.
Aircooled to water cooled. Some were better than others. Of course my favorites are the older but they are the least practical. The later models you could get a bit more heat if everything was perfect, never hot but better than the older ones.
Ive posted before but here is mine. A trailer queen much different than my T.

While the Bug passed the Model T in production numbers, you have to remember that the world's population had doubled between the era of the Model T and the Bug. The one thing it did that Ford (and Chevrolet) tried to do(but failed) was to have air-cooling. Can you imagine how much simpler that would have been prior to antifreeze?

I still have my air cooled vehicle, and the factory heater wasn't any better than the VW If you opted for the gasoline powered heater it would run you out of the car but your distance per tank was horrible I still love this car, why I don't know

You can solve the weak heater problem by installing two boosters Like this inline with the heater hoses to increase air output.

Beat me to it Ed. JC Whitney I think. Solved that problem. The Bug was certainly not junk and the design wasn't poor either. T guys grousing about it is simply amazing. The car was designed & built with exactly the same market in mind that Henry created years earlier and fit it to a T.

Well the reason my dad decided on the Volkswagen instead of the Vega when he bought a new gas mizer was the fact that when he was stationed in Germany the Volkswagens there were reliable and parts were easy to get,cheap and so forth. He felt like the 1's imported here were not as good quality. Who knows really but the service center for ours really turned him off as bad as the car.
I think the lack of heat was reflective to on how tough people are in other parts of the world. We are kinda "wimpy" persay in as we think we need to be 71 degrees in perfect humidity to go to the store and back.