About that space in the garage(pt1) Beetle asky!

And a few late lookers for your perusal...

As above! RUST! They're a lot of fun to drive, and have a lot of character and soul, but by god do they rust! Bit like mini's - the front bumper, the rear bumper, and everywhere inbetween!

Check the channels from inside and out of the car (peel the carpet back), especially the front of the channel, after the bend at the front. Under the rear seats, the scuttle/screen surrounds.

As the others say, Beetle mechanicals are cheap, reliable and easy to fix. The hanging panels are fairly cheap to replace as well. The big issue is rust in the body structure. Having said that, this car has the 3-point seat rails, which were only on the later cars for a couple of years, so it's worthwhile checking that you have a pair of front seats for it. They're pretty hard to find in Australia, but you guys got a lot more late Beetles in Europe, so they're probably a bit more common.

As for rust, starting from the front of the car, the places I'd check for rust are as follows:
Spare wheel well. Not important, but likely to rust out.
Front framehead. Check underneath and inside the wheelarches.
Front inner wheelarches, especially behind the front wheels. This will probably be rusty. They're quite important, especially on a Super.
A pillars, top and bottom corners. These usually rust and are a bit tricky to fix.
Heater channels, inside, outside and underneath.
Floors, including battery area under the rear seat.
Rear inner wheelarches and flanges. Looks like you can see daylight through these already from the pics.
C-pillar corners and the bottom of the rear window. These areas rust out very badly on the later cars with the little plastic vents in the C pillars, which had expanding foam in the body in this area. The foam holds water in and they rust like crazy. The earlier cars don't rust as badly around the back window.
Once you get to the back of the car, I suppose you could look at the rear valance or bumper brackets, but they're not especially important.

Of course, rust in other areas is always possible. As I'm sure you're probably aware, every replacement panel you could want is available.

In my experience, the bonnet is the hardest panel to find in good condition. The rear engine lids and doors are much more common.

Late Beetles rule. This is our 1974 1303. It spends most of its days lazing in the garage on a wood laminate floor (the previous owners converted it into an office but we needed the car space!) I'm very lucky that it has been garaged all its life and didn't see a drop of rain for almost 20 years.


;D