There was a time, many years in the past, when Volkswagen Beetles modified to compete in off-road desert racing (or at the very least to appear like desert racers) had been used as day by day transportation by many American drivers. Modified with uncovered engines and fiberglass physique components, these Baja Bugs— as they’ve been identified for the reason that first ones appeared in Orange County, California, within the early Sixties— have all however disappeared from our streets now. Which means they’ve additionally largely disappeared from our junkyards; certainly, I hadn’t run throughout a single discarded Baja Bug since I began documenting automotive historical past in automobile graveyards again in 2007. Lastly, I ran throughout immediately’s discover: a real Baja Bug in a Denver-area self-service yard.
Volkswagen of America finally got here to embrace the Beetles that had been cruelly sliced up into dune buggies and Baja Bugs, however it took awhile. When VW had me drive a stock-bodied Jetta at 206 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats again in 2018 (due to my unimaginable driving expertise I used to be the one automotive journalist dwelling shut sufficient who owned SCTA-compliant race gear), they introduced alongside each a Meyers Manx and a 1969 Baja Bug. Right here they’re, photographed with my appropriate-vintage Ricohflex VII movie digital camera.
I got here of driving age in Northern California through the peak of the Baja Bug craze on the West Coast, and loads of my highschool classmates had been roaring (on the time, the State of California had no exhaust-noise laws for vehicles with engines displacing fewer than 1600 cubic centimeters, which utilized within the theoretical if not precise sense to hopped-up air-cooled VWs, so these vehicles had been LOUD) round city in Beetles in numerous states of Baja-ization. For causes that made sense to me on the time (1983), I dropped 50 bucks on a 1958 Beetle with an alleged Porsche engine (truly a Kind 3 VW engine with crank-mounted cooling fan, twin carburetors and straight pipes) and all the rear physique torched off in Baja-ish fashion. On account of surviving far too many miles pushed on this automobile, my coronary heart is stuffed with affection for Baja Bugs and it saddened me to see immediately’s Junkyard Gem meet such a destiny.
My automobile did not actually matter as a real Baja, as a result of it lacked the light-weight aftermarket fenders and frunklid. This automobile received a correct Southern California-style Baja conversion, most likely through the Seventies or Nineteen Eighties.
The manufacturing unit construct tag was lengthy gone, maybe as the results of casual title modifications over the many years, however we will place the seemingly date of manufacture of this automobile through the use of sure clues. To begin with, the rear window is the one used on U.S.-market Beetles from the 1958 via 1964 mannequin years.
The swingaxle rear suspension got here from a pre-1969 automobile, and the wheel bolt sample on the brake drum signifies pre-1968 origins. This does not imply a lot while you’re making an attempt to determine the mannequin yr of a Baja Bug, as a result of off-roaders want the swingaxle suspension to the later IRS and swap them in. This one has aftermarket blue spring plates.
The Beetle offered in North America received a gasoline gauge on the sprint (utilizing a purely mechanical system involving a bicycle-brake-style cable working to a float within the front-mounted gasoline tank) beginning with the 1962 mannequin yr. This automobile’s sprint lacks the gasoline gauge gap, which seemingly means it is a 1958-1961 automobile. After all, somebody might have swapped in a pre-1962 sprint panel, however then once more the floorpan could be from a totally completely different automobile, resulting in a Ship of Theseus-type debate that by no means ends. There should be bits from a dozen Beetles right here, anyway.
U-Pull-&-Pay thinks it is a ’61, so we will assume that it got here to the yard with some form of details about its mannequin yr.
Somebody yanked the engine earlier than I received right here, leaving the bolts contained in the bellhousing. Air-cooled Volkswagen engines are nonetheless in demand, so they have an inclination to get bought shortly after showing in a boneyard.
The fiberglass fenders have endured a lot struggling throughout their lives.
There’s loads of thick physique filler over previous injury. The physique began out pink.
Off-road lights as soon as lived on the tube bumper.
It lived an extended and little doubt adventurous life.