Photographer’s note: These cars are quirky and sometimes they decide not to start. This was one of those days. Nadine, her husband, and their neighbors pushed it out of the garage and uphill to make this photo shoot work.

But the car that is the heart, the car of my life, is a ’72 Type 3 Squareback, painted Texas Yellow. For a little while, when I was young, we lived in Beaumont, Texas. My next-door neighbor, who was the cool guy in the neighborhood and I had a crush on, his dad bought that yellow Squareback. I absolutely fell in love with that car. I can’t explain it. This is before I could drive. My dad got transferred and we had to move back to Houston, and I told Mr. Keith, “When you ever go to sell that car, you can only sell it to me.” This is before Facebook and cell phones and that kind of stuff, so we gave him our phone number. Several years later, he called my parents and said, “I’m ready to sell the car, does Nadine still want it?”

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I already had my little orange Volkswagen by then. My parents were like, “Well, we don’t really need another car.” I’m like, “We have to get that car. I have to have that car.” My parents bought it from Mr. Keith, maybe for $2,000, something like that. We went to Beaumont and we drove it back. This yellow Squareback was my dream car.

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My husband and I had it for years until we were going to have a family. We thought, This car has no air-conditioning. It’s got a black interior. We’re in Houston, Texas. If we put a car seat in here, it’s going to melt our child. We were too poor to afford two cars, so we had to sell it for a more modern car with air-conditioning.

I remember interviewing people to sell my car to them. Selling that car, I cried and cried and cried. If I could find the VIN number now and I could search for it—even if I could just get the frame of it, I would buy it. I was very attached to that car. Stupidly, stupidly attached. I love Type 3s, but other colors don’t actually resonate with me. Last night, we were looking at pictures . . . it’s that Texas Yellow. I see it and just begin to weep. 

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When our older son was about to start driving, we thought, Well, we’ll get him a beater car. Then I thought, Wait a minute, what if we let him have a car with all the safety features on it, and I get a beater car that’s a Volkswagen. I’d never had a convertible. I saw this ad for a ’78 in Virginia. It was $5,000. I went out and got cash, drove with my sons to Manassas, and paid him for the car. He did the same thing: He was interviewing me, asking, “Are you sure? Is it going to be in the garage? Are you going to wax it?” So I could tell that he was just as concerned. He was clearly Bostonian as there were Red Sox logos everywhere. I asked, “Do you want your decorations?” He went, “Yeah, I’ll take them, but I’m not going to get another car like this.” We gave him the Boston Red Sox floor pads and seat covers and everything else and drove it back home.

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So it’s been my car since then. It’s had periods where it’s run pretty well and then other times . . . A few years ago the throttle cable snapped. I’m going down the road, and all of a sudden, nothing’s happening. These things happen.

We haven’t had that many outside adventures, because the longest I’ve driven it was from Manassas to here. My grandkids now know it’s DeeDee’s special car (that’s what they call me). The other grandparents live up the street, so when they come to visit, I drive them from here, up the street, and back again. They love it. They’re six, four, and three. They have no understanding of how special this vintage car is yet, but they will one day.

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I come from a field where I was the first woman in a lot of things in science. I’m a biopharmaceutical scientist. There was a cohort ahead of me that sort of broke all the glass ceilings, and I was the first group in academia behind them to benefit from all of that. This was the late eighties, and it was still pretty new to have women in scientific roles. When I first began working in the industry, I had to wear dresses. I hate wearing dresses. But I had to wear dresses in the lab because women PhD scientists were expected to dress up. It was an unwritten rule.

Interestingly enough, I recently looked at the VW chapters in the area and they were having a meet at a brewery in Virginia, so we went. It was all guys. I was chatting with them, and I felt exactly like an equal. These are guys of our era. They’re the same guys that maybe thirty years ago might not have recognized us as peers. As soon as I said my car had been fuel injected and now it’s a dual carb, it’s like I became a human. I could talk to them and it felt great. I certainly know in that club, it seems like women are given equal recognition. If you can talk about Bugs, you’re OK.

When I bought VWs in the seventies, they weren’t vintage. They were just cars. They’re devices. They’re tools. Clearly, there are some genetic predispositions in our personalities that make us resonate with these cars that seem to have some epigenetic pieces. Like maybe you’re a nice person already, you know, or maybe you’re outgoing already. If you’re going to be driving this kind of car, you’re not shy. And if you’re not prepared for that kind of attention, then this is probably not for you.

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When I have been busy, or on particularly stressful days, I have been known to go sit in the car and have a cup of coffee. It’s Zen. It’s not even on. It’s just me sitting in the car, in the garage enjoying it. It’s pretty, it feels good, it feels comfortable.

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If I’m ever in a coma, bring me a recording of a Volkswagen engine and/or bring me the back seat and let me smell it. I assure you that I will wake up right away, because both of those trigger some primal thing in me to pay attention.