I bought a '63 one family owned Bug at the begining of summer to restore as a summer project and finished it up today. I took the car over to the son of the original owner who has owned it himself since the early 1980s. He always meant to restore the car himself and gone so far as to have it painted five years ago and had rebuilt the engine and trans and had extensive brake work done. Two years ago, the car was hit pretty hard in the left rear and the insurance junked it. He couldn't bear to just ship it off to the boneyard so he parked it in the driveway until I came by and offered him some money for it after hearing the story. I straightened out the damage, which really wasn' that bad. The rear clip on the left side was bend which it pulled out easily and the rear apron was toast, so I had to weld in a new section. Plus replace the rear fender and the decklid with original used German parts. I repainted the car, color sanded and buffed it, redid the interior using stock looking materials, and cleaned up and resealed the engine. I took it by today to show it to him and he couldn't take his eyes off of it. He just kept saying, "that's what I always wanted to do, make it look like it did when it was new," which was about as gratifying a comment as I could have gotten. If you guys want to see it, it is one the Samba under type I for sales, titled "1963 One Family Owned Beetle.
--Dan E