Allison & Fern
Model:
1971 Squareback Automatic
Name:
I like old vintagey names—Fern because she’s green and vintage.
Color:
Elm Green
Mileage:
The odometer is broken. It’s turned over at least once.
Motors:
Her engine was rebuilt in 2024.
Owned since:
2023
Owners:
Unknown. We bought it at auction.
Location:
Maryland
Favorite driving song:
“Fantastic Man” by William Onyeabar
We have always had Volkswagens. My husband and I bought our first Bus in ’99—our first car as a married couple. I was pregnant in Volkswagens. I have pictures of infants in front of them. I have pictures of the kids and their buddies on the top, climbing out the window of the Westie. We have our Christmas cards taken in front of them. We camped with our kids at all ages in them. They were always kind of his cars and I wanted one for myself.
We have no idea what the mileage is because the odometer stopped working. And the clock doesn’t work, so we always have it set at 4:20.
Every Saturday, there’s an event down the road called Cars and Coffee, and people come from all over. Some cars are vintage, some are new, some are Japanese imports, some are Porsches. Someone had a green Squareback with beautiful Burberry plaid vinyl inside. It was gorgeous, and I said, “That’s going to be the Volkswagen I get.” One showed up on an auction site, and my husband said, “I’ll do my best,” but he knew he needed to do whatever it took to get it. So he did.
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We can’t camp in Fern, but the Squareback seemed like the next logical step. I always loved the Beetle. I always loved the Ghia. I always loved the Thing. But when I saw this opportunity, I just couldn’t pass it up. Even my husband said, “That is definitely you, that is definitely your car.” We’ve had a lot of fun in her. We just go, roll down the windows, blast music, and take the dog.
​We’ve had three Westfalias: a ’77, a ’78, and now we have a ’79. The first one we got rid of because we had a second child and we needed the money. The second one was amazing. For five years I had a business in that green Bus. We drove to all these music festivals and we’d set up shop and I would sell stuff out of the Bus. The women would shop and the men would talk to my husband about the Bus. They would want to know all the details about it. We had the best time. But we lost her in a house fire. Then we bought the one that we currently have. We’ve actually talked about doing some kind of business and traveling in our Bus again. It was a really neat time in our lives.
After we lost the Bus in the fire, I felt like that was God’s way of telling me that door was closing. Our logo was the Bus. The Bus was all over T-shirts. We had a tent with the Bus all over it. We had a signature oil that was called Happy Camper. Everywhere I looked, it was there. I grieved it so hard when it was gone. I promised myself I would never get that emotionally attached to anything ever again, because I was devastated. I was home with my kids when it happened. I smelled smoke. It had just snowed and I thought, It’s really windy, all the snow’s blowing. Then all of a sudden I realized it wasn’t snow. I opened the door to the garage, and the whole thing was on fire. I had to throw the door closed. That’s a really vivid memory. It’s not a great memory. It’s a core, kind of life-changing Volkswagen memory.
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I look back on it, and I’m like, dude, you would have thought somebody died by the way that I was . . . I was no good. That was my reaction, and I just needed to embrace it. We’re sensitive souls. There’s a bond, there’s a connection to it. I would not react the same if any of my other cars caught on fire. I’d be like, That sucks.
Fern is automatic—you put it in drive and go. It’s kind of cool. But the mechanic we use said, “It’s cool until it breaks. And then when the automatic breaks, you’re gonna have to completely switch it out to a stick,” which is fine. But right now we’re enjoying it automatic. It’s classy.
Now my kids are twenty-one and twenty-three, but we still all go to music festivals in the Bus. They’re too big now to sleep up top, so they tent-camp next to us. They both wanted to take the Bus to prom and we told them no. My husband and I both said, “You’re not driving a car with a bed to prom. No, it’s not happening.”
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My husband and I do a lot of Volkswagen shows because Fern’s so rare. We never won anything before her, but since Fern started winning, now our Bus is winning awards too, which is really funny.
It needs to sound like a Volkswagen and it needs to smell like a Volkswagen. There’s times when I’m like, Maybe I’ll get an air freshener. I can’t, because it needs to smell like gasoline and oil and horsehair. It’s just a weird smell. And it’s the sound. You can hear it before you see it. Our family has always had Volkswagens and it just wouldn’t be the same without them.
