Actually, I'm off by a couple of days. A year ago last Friday, my '69 Beetle Gus was dropped off on a gloomy, rainy winter day at my office by his former owner. The previous owner took off the plate, gave a last knowing look and rode off with his wife to parts unknown. I assured the owner that Gus would be well-loved. I think he'd be proud to hear that Gus is still a big part of our family.
Gus also turned over a minor milestone this evening as I pulled into the driveway. The odometer now reads almost exactly 49000.0. By our best estimates, this means that Gus has traveled but 149,000 miles on this earth since he set foot in the USA a mere 35 years ago. Though it is undocumented through the years, evidence throughout the vehicle tends to make this assumption plausible. At worst, I would believe he has 249,000 miles on him. We've put a fairly substantial 6,000 miles on the clock in a year, considering Gus served daily driver duties for me for but 3 months.
If nothing else, Gus has been excellent company out in the side yard to our other Beetle, Herbie. Now that we've started restoration #2 on Herbie, Gus has been an excellent encouragement to our other Beetle.
In case I hadn't mentioned, we've decided to strip Herbie of his stripes and numbers, as well as his spray-can white paint job and give him a proper restoration. I've already stripped the interior bare and will soon be fixing up the floor pans and applying liberal quantities of POR-15 to prevent any further deterioration efforts. Then its on to a proper paint job back to the original color - Marina Blue. Next, a good interior restoration and replacement of all the trim that has already been replaced. Finally, a fairly substantial rebuild of the suspension, especially the front-end which has a really bad case of the Super Beetle Shimmies.
I'm working on firing up the obligatory website to chronicle our second, more valiant effort at Herbie's renewal. Stay tuned.
Malcolm '69 Beetle (Gus) '71 SB (Herbie)