When the Bug came home

My earliest memory of the Volkswagen beetle goes back to the early 90's when I was about 5 - My uncle used to own a Gray Beetle. In hindsight I think it was a mid 60's specimen in Fontana Gray. During long weekends we'd visit him and we'd go picnicking in it. My enduring memory of that car is feeling warm and snug in the rear seat, looking out of the fixed rear window at the rain pelting around us, the smell of food in the small storage area behind the rear seat making me hungry while the engine whined away as the little car sped away on the twisty roads of Kandy.  With time those trips became rarer and rarer and eventually the Beetle-back seat memory was archived and stored in some remote corner of my brain... until years later. 

My father is an automotive enthusiast like the rest of his brothers (may the ones who departed rest in peace) - after driving day to day Japanese Sedans for 25 years he eventually sold off his boring yet almost reliable Nissan which he had for 11 years and decided to call it a day as far as driving was concerned. However at the back of his mind he always wanted to get hold of a motoring memento that had a link to his childhood. He was mostly interested in three relatively common cars from the 60's : The Morris Minor, the Series 1 or 2 Land Rover and of course the Beetle. 

After a Series 2 Land Rover deal fell through - my father decided to focus on a Beetle - specifically a 1300 from the late 60's in it's purest form. Without the rear air-vents and with an over-bar on the bumper. The hunt for this lasted months and we came across dozens and dozens of cars, either overly modified or sadly neglected or rusting underneath but dressed up for sale. Eventually we sourced one -  a Birch-Green 1967 specimen with a 1300 engine in Kandy -incidentally a few hundred meters from where my uncle used to live. 

A friend of ours had put us in contact with a local mechanic who specialized in VW's who agreed to accompany us to do an inspection. After a bit of bargaining we sealed the deal and Dad was finally a proud owner of a 1967 VW Beetle. The Volks-specialist, a small made, wizened gentleman accompanied us for the first bit of the journey - and he actually drove for a bit until we realized the indicators were malfunctioning. A quick detour took us to a one-eyed car electrician who soon set things straight. And we were back on track. Since the Volks-specialist and my father were occupying the front seats,  after decades I was reunited with that snug rear seat - all 179 centimetres of me. It was a nostalgic ride but the real fun began when the Volks-Specialist departed and I moved into the front seat. Dad had not driven for more than an year - he had not driven stick in 12 years so understandably the first few kilometres were a bit cautious. Slow, cautious gear shifts with the whiny engine purring but as the car ticked along Dad was re-discovering his touch. The shifts were more precise, more fluid, he was experiencing the simple pleasures of a simply engineered car, the type of car he'd have driven as a teenager, a young adult. By now Dad was fully in his element the needle hovering above 50 (MPH of course).The Beetles engine was whining at full pitch. Sunday, an open road, a man in his 60's driving a car that was almost 50, a simple dashboard displaying just the speed, the wind blowing against my face through the open window - this was one unforgettable ride!