Emily & Bombshell Betty

She’s chopped and dropped and she’s got a tranny raise and I right-hand-drived her. She’s rusty and crusty and amazing. I love the rusty things—she’s got character.

I’ve been through so much with this car. I bought it when everyone told me I shouldn’t. I had one friend who told me “Do it!” His name was Fisher—we shared a birthday and he passed away a couple of years later. When I started to work on the Volkswagen motor, I thought, This is super easy, why is everyone telling me not to do it? This is fun. It’s frustrating at times, when nothing works, but I’ve done everything in this car. I could tell you literally everything about the motor because I’ve built it inside and out. It was on my kitchen table over Christmas a few years ago—I was rebuilding it and putting in pistons and rings and everything.

A neighbor—he’s one of those manly men—kept coming by and asking my husband, Corey, when he would be done with the car. I’m standing there with a grinder, sparks flying everywhere, cutting off the front end of my car for the beam extension, and he’s talking about how Corey is building me the car. I was like, “You have to get out of my garage, sir.”

 

I used to hang out with a bunch of Volkswagen people, and it’s kind of funny because I actually didn’t like Volkswagens—Bugs in particular. My boyfriend at the time drove a ’73 Super, and he had so many problems with it. It was so annoying—we could never go anywhere, because his car never ran. Then we wound up at a car show where there was a Volksrod. I was like, “That! That right there is what I need.” I went on the hunt. My friend Jared had this car. It was a normal-looking Bug at that point, but it was a rolling shell when I bought it—only tires, axle, and body. I bought it from him for $700. One of the things he made me promise was that I wouldn’t chop it. I was like, “Yeah, yeah, sure. Here’s the rest of your money. Let me get that pink slip.”

I had the car for about six years before I chopped it. My husband was the main motivation, and he chopped it as I didn’t know metalwork at that point. I sat in the car, they lowered it to where I liked the height, weighted it in place, and then finished it. So it’s literally built to my height. If my husband drives it, he has to stick his head out the sunroof. I ran with it cambered like crazy for years and years.

 

My very first voyage in this car, after we right-hand-drived it, we drove one hundred miles to Bug-O in Sacramento. We just got in and went. That’s also how I learned to drive manual—I bought a manual car, not knowing how to drive manual—I went out super-late at night and drove around the streets and got used to it. I wasn’t afraid to stall at four in the morning when no one is out. Go big or go home.

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I don’t think I could ever get rid of this car. I’ve been in some financial hardships through the years, and I’d look at her and think We’re not going to go there. We’re not even going to contemplate selling this car. I will live in this car before I sell this car. And luckily I didn’t have to.

 

I have a long, kind of tattered past with my family, and I remember keeping up with the ambulance when my mom almost died and jumping the tracks when I got the phone call that my aunt Darcy had died. I went through a couple of boyfriends in this car. Yeah. So it’s kind of my soul, you know. She’s tattered, a little beat-up, but she still runs, and I love her. She’s a head-turner. It’s really fun to go by a school when all the little kids are just kind of beating the hell out of each other slug-buggin’.

Driving her is so much fun. You’re so low to the ground. You feel every bump, dot, and pebble on the road because there’s no suspension. I’ve been stuck in traffic and watched cars going slowly by recording it or taking pictures or waving out the window. It brings joy to everybody.

 

I tell everyone I’m gonna be buried in it. This is the only thing that I’ve put heart and soul and literal blood into. But now I have a baby, so I can’t really say that . . .

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It’d be cool to teach Ali how to drive manual on this car and pick her up from school in it. If she gets really into VWs, I would consider passing it down to her—but she’s only seven months, so we’ll see what happens. I actually put her in the car last night with me when I was starting it, and she’s not quite a fan of the loudness yet, but she’ll learn. I hope she doesn’t hate it. She’s birthed into the wrong family if that’s the case.

 

We’re big in the Volkswagen family. I have a daily (2013 VW GTI), and we’ve talked about going to shows and concluded that my husband will take one of the modern cars with the kid seats and the airbags and stuff and I’ll just drive Betty. At least until my daughter is old enough, and then maybe I’ll put some seat belts in it because it definitely does not have seat belts.

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Betty is 100 percent legal. Normally I get pulled over for curiosity. Cops ask, “What is this?” If it’s going to get me out of a ticket, let’s talk about my car. I ask if they want to go for a ride.