1967 Beetle Sold in England but US SPEC?

[evanfrucht]

I have a 1967 bug that until recently I thought I was the third owner of. I have receipts from every year going back to 1968 when the car had its first inspection @ 12,000 miles in Saratoga, California. It was well maintained and well driven. My paperwork showed that it stayed with "the Clarks" from 1968 until at least 1998. I don't have the original receipt of sale for the car, unfortunately. The guy I bought it from in 2014 had it for a few years and bought it from the daughter of the Clark family. For the last couple years I assumed that H. Clark bought the car new in Saratoga, CA and lost the receipt of sale. ANYWAYS...

The other day I found the daughter and she answered many questions for me.
the family cherished the car very much and did use it a lot.

As she remembers the car was purchased by her father in ENGLAND in late 1967 or early 1968. She believes that he purchased it from a single man he worked with at Chicksands Air Force Base in England with GTE. She said it was basically new when they got it. They drove it all around Southern Europe before the shipped it from Portugal to California and moved. It stayed with her family until 2010 about. Engine rebuilt in 1980 by her... it was a well used car.

My questions are

She said nothing has been replaced and that the bumpers are original, but they are US spec bumpers and US spec 67 front fenders/headlights. I'm no expert on this matter at all but it wouldn't make sense if it was sold in England ( or "a Euro Bug").

She told me the car originally came with a Blaupunkt not Sapphire radio, (now that sounds like Europe spec 1967)

Did this mix of US Spec / Euro Spec happen with bugs from England, anyone know?

also it is VW Blue (L633) color Sunroof Deluxe Beetle. Mostly original paint (repainted once same color on outside and on top of old paint. inside is original paint)
i asked her if the car was ever hit because there is very slight damage in spare tire well and hood doesn't fit perfect. she says she doesn't think anything was ever replaced but she confirmed with me that she lightly rear ended a school bus in the car at some point. it seems to me that front hood and possibly left fender may have been replaced at some point. heres some pictures!

[KTPhil]

As a tourist (and perhaps as a serviceman or other military-related service), you could order a USA-spec car for later delivery to the USA. Maybe this is what was done in this case.

[Slow 1200]

At least the left wing is not the original one (check the horn grille location), but it does look like a US-spec 67 to me, myself I also have a US-spec 67 that was sold originally in Europe.

If you're lucky you will find the M-codes still written with wax pencil under the trunk linker (cheaper and faster than ordering the birth certificate)

as said above, many US-spec VWs found their way into Europe through US military bases, as well as tourist delivery cars that were sold after touring around and never shipped across the Atlantic.

If the car was purchased new in the UK and it had the steering wheel on the left....it was clearly a special order

[evanfrucht]

Ya that would make sense since he apparently bought it from a friend he worked with at an AIR FORCE base in England. So the guy he bought it from may have bought it new through the military base?

[evanfrucht]

[KTPhil]

Search the '67 one year only thread (I think), and embedded somewhere was a detailed comparison with pictures showing the differences. I don't remember which placement is correct, but with them different, one of them isn't!

[67ctbug]

The closer the horn grill the better.
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[EverettB]

[mukluk]

Just a nitpick, but while the bumpers with overrider tubes were required equipment for the US, they were not unique to the US -- "bash protection" bumpers were optional equipment available outside the US. A car thus equipped with these bumpers isn't necessarily US spec.
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1960 Ragtop w/Semaphores "Inga"

[KTPhil]

[mukluk]

Ram protection, that's the term... guess I have bird strikes cluttering up my thoughts at the moment.

My comments weren't intended to imply that the car in this thread isn't US spec, just felt compelled to speak out about the over generalization descriptor "US spec" when referring to the ram protection style bumpers.

And now back to our regularly scheduled ramblings...
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1960 Ragtop w/Semaphores "Inga"

[evanfrucht]

After talking to the daughter, I think the car was brought into England through an US Air Force base.

and also, now I do think my front fenders have been replaced. And possibly the front hood... the daughter told me she rear ended a school bus im mid 70's but she said she didn't think anything got replaced. However, now that I'm looking closer and doing more research on 67 front fenders, I think whatever body shop her father brought the car too must have replaced them.

The one thing that still is interesting to me is that the car apparently came with a blaupunkt radio not sapphire. but otherwise it is a standard US Spec 1967 Bug(12v, front fenders, bumpers etc), it was just sold in England originally? can anyone explain? someone told me once that all 1967 bugs came with sapphire radios in the US?

Thanks for all the info guys !

[KTPhil]

No surprise on the radio. Radios were installed at the dealers or distributors, not the factory. So a tourist delivery vehicle would have left the factory with no radio, and a local agency would have installed the radio. The only radios in England would have been the European radios. I am sure they didn't ship radios across the Atlantic and stock them just for tourist delivery cars.

[Digger89L]

I think most VW car radios in North America had dealer-installed radios ...and they would have used locally-sourced Sapphire (Bendix or Motorola) radios. If the car was ordered and fitted out in Germany, it would have been received from a German VW dealer (not directly from the VW factory as I understand) so it would make sense that they would install a locally-sourced Blaupunkt radio as they wouldn't have access to Sapphire radios. I don't think there is an M-code for a factory installed radio ....
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[jack1448]

A multiband radio would be typically typically installed in US spec cars destined for delivery in Europe. That way you could listen to the radio while in Europe and later in the US. We had a US spec tourist delivery beetle (1970) which we picked up in Luxembourg. It came with a Blaupunkt multiband radio (L and M bands) for use in Europe (L) and US (M). This was the car I learned to drive in.

[Erik G]

even then, you have to consider that most people that bought a vw, especially a beetle, were cheap. Radios were very expensive. A lot of time, they would make their final monthly payment on their VW, and THEN get a radio once it was paid off.

It is quite normal to see a radio one or two years older than the car it's installed in. there should be a serial number on one of the sides, I think the passenger side if I remember right
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[bluebus86]

i had a 67 with sun roof, same color. oh what memories. the cars name was Newton. still have its motor, sold the rest of the car to a kid from southern california.
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