Cathy & Betsy
Model:
1959 Beetle. It was born in the same year I was.
Name:
My Mom named it Betsy. While driving, she used to say “Come on, Betsy!” and tap her hand on the steering wheel because the car took a while to get going from a stop.
Color:
Garnet Red, VW paint code L358, the original color of the car. Only the exterior has been repainted.
Mileage:
My Dad used to disconnect the cable so the mileage indicator would not work and he could eventually sell it with low mileage. Right now I’m at 49,057. It's probably turned over a few times.
Motors:
My dad and I tore down the engine and rebuilt it in 1978. We had the engine block “dipped” and he marked it with a unique marking so he made sure we got the right block back from the shop.
Owned since:
1978—my boyfriend and I rescued it from sitting under a tarp in the backyard.
Owners:
1959: A coworker of my dad’s. 1963: My dad. 1978: Me.
Location:
California
Favorite driving song:
My mom used to sing and play these on her ukulele: “Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue” and “You Are My Sunshine.”
My mom and dad are from Detroit and worked for Ford Motor. They drove across the country in a ’53 Ford that kept overheating and that green Ford gave my mom so much trouble. Eventually they paid someone $25 to tow it away. I’m sure my dad would have loved to keep it.
My mom wanted something air-cooled, and a Bug fit the bill. My dad’s coworker had one he was selling because his wife didn’t like it. So my dad bought it in 1963 for $1,200. Their monthly payments were $40.40. My mom named her Betsy.​
We worked on it after school and after he got off work for about a year and a half. We bled the brakes, we kept it six volts. Not sure that was wise, but they didn’t have any power and only lights. He was all about safety, so we took the engine block out. He wanted to have the engine block dipped at our local automotive store, and he marked the metal block with something unique to him to make sure the block we brought to them would be the same block we got back. The auto shop delivered as promised. I still have the original block, and the numbers for my car all match.
We got it going, and it became my daily driver. I went to college. I got married. I had my daughter, and her car seat fit in the back of the Bug. We went everywhere in that car. Eventually I replaced the car with an ’89 Mazda 626. So, again, it went into “tarp” mode. It sat on the driveway under a blue tarp for years. Around 2004, I decided to sell it. There was a lot of interest, but the buyers wanted to carve it up and make it a dune buggy. I thought, What am I doing? This is a cute little car, gets great gas mileage, and it has a lot of history.
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Back in the day, my mom once loaded thirteen Bluebirds (Camp Fire Girls) into the car. Three or four of them in the well behind the back seat. This is in the days when we had no seat belts, no rules, right? I will never forget that day when all those girls rolled out of that car.
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The Bug has pulled a trailer. We used to go to Fallen Leaf Lake, near Lake Tahoe, in a tent with the trailer with four kids. My dad tried to pass a couple of little ladies who were going what he thought was too slow, so he passed them in the Bug pulling a trailer, and of course the fan belt broke, so that kind of delayed our camping trip. We had to get towed. We have eight-millimeter footage of the event.
In 1971, my dad retired the car. He tore down the fence, wheeled it into the backyard, and put a tarp over it. I learned to drive in a Grecian Green ’66 Chevy Bel Air station wagon. On rare occasions, I got to drive the “new good car,” another green car, the ’71 Pinto.
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In 1978, I had no money. I was about to graduate high school and go to college and the Bug was sitting in the backyard, so me and my boyfriend at the time, we decided to fix it up. The first thing we did was take the windshield out, and we broke it. Then I tried to replace the windshield so my dad wouldn’t know—he found out. I didn’t get in trouble. What he did was make a deal. He said, “You pay for all the cosmetics, and I’ll help pay for half the engine rebuild and you can have a car.”
I’ve got the original plates. When I was going to sell the car, I got new plates. But I said that those were stolen or lost, and then I decided not to sell the car and found the original plates by “accident,” and they allowed me to reassign the plates. So the DMV was pretty cool. She knew what I did.
With all of these memories, I decided to restore the car. I’m a purist. There’s nothing on that car that doesn’t belong except seat belts. My dad said, “Let’s get a mirror for the right side.” I said, “Nope, the car didn’t come with it.”
I tried to give it to my daughter. She didn’t want it. My son might be interested in it, so there is still hope. He flies airplanes, but can’t do a manual transmission. I’m not kidding.
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The VW Bug is just a fun little car. When I am out and about, people give me a wave, give me a peace sign, or roll down their windows and ask me what year the car is. It brings back memories for so many people—they stop you and say “I had . . .” or “I got married in . . .” or “I went on my first date in . . .” They want to share their story. In fact, today there was a young girl behind me in a VW, just a beater car, and she gave me the peace sign. There is a camaraderie between Volkswagen owners. It brings people together.
When my dad passed away in 2016, I parked the car right in front of the church, and then when my mom passed away, we did the same thing because it was their car. They both used to come to the Kelley Park car show with me. That car has a lot of history—it’s been in the family for sixty years. I can’t part with it.
