A Volkswagen Beetle Reborn To Keep Up With Modern Life

I put as many miles on my 1970 Lancia as my ‘daily driver’. Yes, it pollutes more than my modern, but it absolutely works just fine on modern roads and highways, and there’s no reason to believe it’ll be legislated off the road any time soon.

I’m not arguing that we can completely replicate the driving experience of decades past, nor that we’d want to. But there’s a world of authenticity between that and dropping modern motors, gearboxes, a/c, power windows, &c into every classic shell because it’s easier and more convenient to drive that way.

The Robert Johnson analogy is simply foolish. If Tazio Nuvolari was racing today, he’d be driving a current car, so why have vintage racing at all. In fact, because modern cars are so much more capable, we shouldn’t bother with old cars at all–resto-mod or otherwise. Even the resto-mod you love so much isn’t nearly as capable as a current Mercedes.

In short, it’s an argument of infinite regression. Taking your argument to its logical conclusion, because no historic object can be perfectly genuine, we shouldn’t care about the question of authenticity at all. And if that’s the case, why even bother with a car that looks like an old VW? Why bother with a resto-mod at all? After all, by your argument, Robert Johnson would be driving a modern car now–not a modern car inside an old body and interior.

Guys–I think some of you are over-reacting here. If you actually read my first post, I said “[i]And with the increased reliability of modern components, there may be plenty of reasons to not want a classic driving experience. As an retro-chic urban commuter for everyday use, there’s a lot to like here. And as an exterior accessory for the owner’s fashion boutique, it’s hard to argue with it[/i].”

You’ve got a problem with that? This obviously isn’t a car I dislike. And the first sentence in the quote clearly acknowledges that resto-mods have their place. I just don’t want us to confuse [i]customization[/i]–whether bad or good, as here–with [i]restoration[/i]. They’re not the same.

If you want to argue with what I said in my first post. Fine; let’s discuss that. But let’s argue about what I actually said, not what knee-jerk assumption you leapt to[i] without actually reading what I wrote[/i].

Wagoner, no–I was absolutely NOT directing that comment specifically at you.

Resto-mods and perfect, untouched original cars are two ends of the same spectrum, with neither extreme actually being achievable in practice. So with a car like this one being somewhere closer to the center of the spectrum, it’s possible to argue it either as a resto-mod or a modified classic. And that’s particularly true in this instance given that the engine is the same basic architecture.

Unlike the straw-man argument made earlier (not by you), I’m not arguing that we can recreate the “as-new” driving experience of a 40- or 50-YO car, nor that we need to maintain absolute originality. The Lancia I mentioned earlier has breakerless ignition, and the engine has lightweight pistons that are matched and balanced to a higher standard than original. I run full synthetics in the engine and gearbox, waterless coolant, and modern spark plugs; you couldn’t pay me enough to run original-spec Champion R61s. But the driving experience is still fundamentally similar to the original, and substantially different than if I had swapped in a more modern engine and suspension components.

So, as I said, I don’t really dislike this VW. And because it’s somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, it’s certainly not the most clear-cut example for my argument that resto-mods and classics are fundamentally two different things, and that a resto-mod shouldn’t be called a restoration. But that was my point.