Sorry, my German is a bit rusty… Nein 11 & LimeBug Ghia

The US has Father’s Day in June. Sooo tempted to ask for an Apple Pencil…

The RedBubble thing I think it based in the US. Everything I’ve bought from there is delivered from the US and turn around is about two weeks.

My next job is designing a T Short for my sons annual skateboard competition. He is 14 and started running one last year.
We had about 50 kids last year. This year we have had some great interest from sponsors.
World Industries has sent 5 of their skateboard decks and Santa Cruz is sending him some clothing.

A local shoe company is giving him some kid cool skate shoes and the local community is supporting as is the local Skate shop and indoor skate park!

Been a little quiet on the posting front - sorry! What with jobs on houses, the every day grind and some other happenings, things have been a little backed up.

The interesting (to me) stuff started when I had a notification that someone had posted a Karmann Ghia for sale (or parts) a week or so ago. I have a standing flag set, from back when I was looking for a Ghia.

On Sunday night, a post appeared on the local free selling website that a guy had a group of Ghias for sale.
Not only that but they were $200 each or 5 for $800.
Right, yeah… well I thought I would take the risk and reply, because this was one of the pictures:



Any Ghia sniffer out there will know, the Ghia in the foreground is extremely rare - a one year only (58/59) low lite convertible. Interestingly (again to Ghia sniffers) is that a large number of the parts carried over to my car. $200. It had to be worth an email…

Amazingly, it wasn’t a scam and the guy got back to me. Yes, come on over tonight. He had a field full of around 120 left and is selling them all off!

I turned up around 7pm after work and met a super nice guy. He told me a tale about how he had started - about 20 years ago, there was a big drugs bust around 5 or so miles away from his farm. The Federal police came over and said they had to clear the site, and if he wanted anything, he just had to move it.

This resulted in the 120 cars plus more (brand new tractors etc) being driven over to his farm and two fields of cars parked up! Many more were crushed during COVID as the price of steel went up, but these last cars were thought to either have a little more value, no log book (so difficult to legally crush) or had sentimental value.

We walked through a field full of cars and on to a row with Karmann Ghias and damn it, someone had beaten me to the Low lite! Apparently they had turned up with a trailer at 8:00am and handed over the $200. This is the scene that met me, including the patch of grass where the car had been sitting a mere 11 hrs earlier:



I didn’t believe it could happen, so I wasn’t that surprised. There were so many cool cars left in the field, from early 924s, 3 series BMWs, lots of Toyota Celicas / Corollas, spitfires, MGs, yank tin (of which I only had a clue of maybe what 1 in 10 was), and still lots of aircooled stuff. I took a bunc of pics for the local VW club including these, as most would make good parts cars.





















My son has had a ‘thing’ for RX7s so took a pic of some of the better preserved ones of those as well.



He also showed me something quite rare in the US, that he said he really enjoyed driving around the farm, so couldn’t bring himself to crush along with the rest that were in the area:



Funny considering what else he could have chosen to drive (boat tailed spider anyone?)

I passed another similar field or two of cars on the way home… maybe ripe for a speculative knock on a door at some point!

This past weekend, I also made it out to a local car show.
37th annual Bug in.

Unfortunately my son (14) has just started work at Dairy Queen, the ice cream store, so had to leave before 11, but still had fun looking around.



Even so early, there were still some really nice cars there. I didn’t take as many pics as I should have as I kept bumping into people and having a natter…
Still, these are some of the cars there.






















































I also spoke to this seller and grabbed a card. My car must have seen as 3rd gear went missing on the way home so looks like when I replace the rear end with air shocks, the trans can come out anyway.



There are another couple of nice / interesting cars my son snapped. Will share those once I grab them from his phone!

Lucky for him, he has the US accent. The British accent helped me punch definitely above my weight, and he has his Mums good looks… so he’s doing okay.

I’m just looking forward to picking him up from work, through the summer holidays. I might have to take a preemptive strike and buy larger trousers now.

I’ll have to try that, I think the snickers version sounds better to me. 

it keeps him off the Xbox and he’s saving for Miata parts, so it’s a win-win!

Top notch convertible although it appears to be homemade.

Did You know that VW already had the sales brochures printed before they cancelled the production of the type 3 vert?

I held one in hands once at a car show, they ocasionally appear for sale.

The doors didn't look like cut up.

You can see one in this dutch video:



And a dedicated type 3 homepage where You can test Your german.

Typ 3 Cabrio

Braaap, my German is way rustier than I ever imagined! Thank you for the link and video though.
I forget about the few type 3 Ghia carbios that were made too. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one on film before.

Horrido, it was sad, but I have sooo many projects, it’s probably just as well. The adventure was great, though telling the wife I was off to buy another car didn’t go down too well. If I could think of a place to store it, I would go back and pick up one of the Ghias for a future project - at $200 it would be hard to go wrong.

Still, it looks like once the LimeBug kit arrives, I will be saving my pennies to buy a new transmission to fit at the same time. I’m still hoping to drive it a couple more times though. I mean how important is 1 gear in 4?