VZi Discounted Front Anti-Roll Bar Kits for Type 1 ‘Ball-Joint’ Bugs from SSP/VW Heritage.
———————————————————————————-
Whilst the rest of us have been recovering from Bug Jam, Mr Burrows has been busy negotiating another discount with our friends at SSP/VW Heritage.
We hope to bring VZi users at least one ‘blag’/'discount’ per month from both JK and VW Heritage and Brian Burrows is talking to (nagging) other companies for deals on their products.
We realise that these products aren’t going to be wanted by every single VZi user, but every penny saved in these times is a bonus – and we’re sure these (ongoing) discounts will help at least some VZi’ers save some pennies as they build their dream VWs. If this month’s ‘blag’ is of no use to you, please be patient, we hope to bring you discounts on varied and useful products each month – just for being a VZi Member.
ANTI-ROLL BAR KITS
This month’s ‘blag’ enables VZi users to purchase front anti roll-bar kits to fit ‘Ball Joint’ Bugs for a mere £29.95 inc VAT! That’s a saving of over £24 on the £54.10 RRP.
Offer is only available until the end of August 2010 so get in quick!
The webpage link to the Anti-roll bar sets is HERE:
Once you have chosen to purchase, before ‘checking out’, you will need to enter a code to receive the discount. This code can be found in the thread on Volkszone.com HERE:
THIS OFFER ENDS AT MIDNIGHT ON TUESDAY 31st AUGUST 2010.
Once again, we would like to say a huge thanks to Barney, Dave and all the guys at VW Heritage and SSP and those behind the scenes at Volkszone that made these great ‘blags’ possible.
Please visit VW Heritage website at: www.vwheritage.com for more bargains and watch this space each month for details of further ‘Blagged By Brian’ discounts and deals.
The annual convergence on Sandown Park in Surrey by many thousands of VW fans marks the true start of the show season. Now in its 16th year, it is no surprise that it is so well attended as the show attracts some of the very best show cars from all over Europe and sometimes even further afield.
This year was no exception and over the weekend of the 27th-28th of March, the venue once again filled to capacity with some very delectable German metal and many eager punters who came to look and drool.
PLEASE CLICK ON THE THUMBNAILS TO VIEW LARGER PICS.
The show has it all, from show cars that are examples of perfection to club stands, traders, a swapmeet and various displays, activities and demonstrations taking place throughout the weekend. There really is so much to take in that you can spend the whole weekend there and still not have seen it all.
As soon as you entered the main doors you were greeted by an original ‘Herbie’. Next to that, the newly revamped Volksworld Fridolin was on display and people could make a donation to charity to sit inside it and have their photo taken and then made into a replica front cover of the magazine. VW Heritage were also on hand to convert the giveaway Beetle into an Empi GTV replica over the course of the weekend. To one side was an artist creating paintings by dipping the tyres of remote control cars into paint and then driving them around on canvas.
When you left the entrance hall, you were immediately faced with the show cars. They were spread over 2 floors and this year, the variation and quality was breathtaking. There were too many to mention them all but the ones that stood out in my mind were the ‘Baja’d’ Brazilia, The Hammered Inc., roof chopped, split window Beetle, A Split powered by a mid mounted V8, a replica of a Tamiya Sand Scorcher, an insane New Beetle funny car, a ‘Steampunk’ inspired Split window Beetle and there was also a Hebmuller sat next to a custom hard top version. All of the above drove away with Top 20 awards for their efforts.
Outside, the SSVC put on their usual, excellent display and were joined by the Early Bay club and the T2D stand. The Type 2 Detectives had 3 of their best creations on display. The notorious ‘TV Bus’ was joined by their slammed Brazillia and the recently finished and stunning Mk 3 Golf which uses a Type 3 chassis and a Type 1 air-cooled engine to get it moving. This also won a well deserved Top 20 award, which is the first time a Golf had ever taken a prize at the show.
Outside, the club area was equally as busy with some excellent vehicles and inventive stands. ‘New Waves’ and ‘’The Panzer Paint Scrapers’ duelled it out once again with excellent displays and this year the former was the victor having supplied their own sound system to keep people entertained. The cars on display ranged from Bugs to Busses, Trekkers to 356’s and even some of the rarest VWs in the U.K namely an Australian Country Buggy and an Iltis.
After the show closed on the Sunday, the majority of people left with an exhausted smile on their faces. There were of course the usual online gripes over the following days concerning expensive food, a packed swapmeet and difficulty in parking but these are all a testament to how successful the show is. The Volksworld show is up there among the very best VW shows in the world and I’m already looking forward to 2011.
VOLKSWORLD 2010 WINNERS
Top 20
Stephane Dandeville – 1957 Cabriolet, Iris Blue, Belgium
Steve Collins – Orange Metalflake Buggy, Mark Dryden
Gregory Van Hillenbosch – Brown Squareback, Belgium
Shaun Knight – Champagne Edition Bus
Eric Roja – 1967 Cal Look
Ben Coates – 1969 Resto Cal Ghia
Christian Grundmann – 1949 Hebmuller, Germany
Barry Livel – Brown single cab, Holland
Bob Burrows – 13 window bus
Xavier Adam – Orange raised Brasilia, Belgium
Matt Balls – Aircooled Mk3 Golf
Rudy Olivencia & Eric Thon – New Beetle, France
Dave Harries – Rover V8 mid engined split bus
Tero Vilta – RestoCal cab, Finland
Walter Jellinek – Sand Scorcher Beetle, Bavaria
Richard Clark – Resto Split
Shrek – Das Oval, Beligium
Aurelio Papi – Made in Italy gasser, Rome
Matt Keene – Drag Beetle
The Williams Brothers – 1950 split Beetle custom
Visitors Choice
Tom Varkala – Marathon Beetle
Prosign Choice
Tom Varkala – Marathon Beetle
Kinky Mick’s Crown
Thomas Koch, Hammered Inc roof chopped Beetle
Footman James Best Club Stand
New Waves Club
Best of Show
Thomas Koch, Hammered Inc. Roof Chopped Beetle
Illustrator Matthew Keeler has produced these new and exciting posters, taken from a series of his original paintings of toy cars.
They are on offer to those who wish to buy and own a small collectable piece of VW art history and at the same time contribute to charity.
50% of every poster sold will go to Brad’s Cancer Foundation, who have been raising funds and providing equipment, care and support to teenagers with cancer, their families and the Teenage Cancer Trust since 2003.
The other half will go towards the expense of Matthew competing in the 2012, New York to Alaska, Trans-Am Rally in his ‘59 “Peking to Paris” Beetle.
In support of Brad’s Cancer Foundation, VW Heritage and SSP have generously donated the cost of printing a limited edition of 1000 copies of each design.
The posters are on sale at the very reasonable price of £5 each plus p&p.
They are available from the VW Heritage shop, www.vwheritage.com , www.brads.org.uk and from the Brad’s Cancer Foundation stands throughout the show season.
A French doctor is embarking on the 6,000-mile trip to promote a better image of Pakistan. ‘It’s not all about terrorism,’ he says.
The ‘Foxy Shahzadi’, or Beetle Princess, is the most distinctive car from Lahore to Lyons. Photograph: Tanveer Shahzad/Dawn newspaper
Low-key is good in Islamabad these days, writes www.guardian.co.uk, where the threat of Taliban suicide bombings has filled Pakistan’s capital with checkposts, blast walls and a queasy air of anxiety. But one proudly conspicuous car rolled through the streets last week – a 25-year-old Volkswagen Beetle, painted in an explosion of trippy colours. At the wheel was a defiant doctor, Vincent Loos, headed for Paris.
“My dream was to return by road,” says the 39-year-old Frenchman, who has just finished three years’ work at a local hospital. Doctors without borders indeed – or perhaps doctors without sense. Only six months ago his ride was a dust-smeared wreck, collapsed at the bottom of an Islamabad street waiting for a final trip to the scrapyard. Loos, an intensive care specialist, restored the car to full health, then hired an artist to paint in the local style known as “truck art”.
Now the “Foxy Shahzadi”, or Beetle Princess, is the most distinctive car from Lahore to Lyons. The body is covered in a psychedelic array of flowers, waterfalls and the faces of famous Pakistanis. The idea behind the 6,000-mile trip is to promote the “soft side” of Pakistan. “We want to show the world it’s not just about terrorism,” says Loos.
Travelling by Foxy, as Beetles are affectionately known in Pakistan, Loos is paying homage to a local motoring cult. Dozens of well-maintained Beetles ply the streets. (Mine, in a cool grey, is Betsy, a proud 1967 model.)
The Beetle came to Pakistan in the 1950s with army officers and bureaucrats returning from postings abroad. The appeal has endured – Mubashir Hasan, a finance minister from the 1970s, still drives his around Lahore. Romano Karim of Islamabad’s VW club estimates about 500 “Foxies” travel Pakistan’s roads. “Cute, quirky, cheap spare parts – it’s the ideal car,” he says.
The French doctor’s Foxy should reach Paris in about two weeks. His team is equipped with an ample stock of spare parts and a line of Urdu poetry inscribed on the bonnet: “Every mother’s prayer is a breeze from paradise.”
Effingham, IL (October 19, 2009) – Mid America Motorworks, marketer and manufacturer of Air-Cooled Volkswagen parts and accessories, today announced the addition of Rebuilt Volkswagen Speedometers to their product line. This product is an OEM VW speedometer that has been completely disassembled and inspected for damaged or missing parts. All internal parts are cleaned and lubricated or replaced as needed. Each unit is recalibrated back to factory specifications. Cases are soda blasted and clear coated for years of shine. The glass and chrome trim are both replaced for high luster and new pointers are used on each unit. All warning light filters are replaced.
Additional benefits and features of the Volkswagen Speedometer:
Available for the Beetle – 1953-1972
Available for the Super Beetle – 1971-1979
Comes with a one-year warranty
Delivered ready for installation
Rebuilt in the USA
As a VW owner and enthusiast myself, I found the need for quality rebuilt speedometers. Looking at the possibilities, we found one of the best restoration builders who met our quality requirements and we are happy to offer this product to our customers,” said Josh Yager, VW merchandiser at Mid America Motorworks.
The Volkswagen Speedometers are shipped directly from the manufacturer within 7-10 business days with prices ranging from $229.99 to $279.99 depending on the year.
For additional information contact:
Nancy Bushur
Mid America Motorworks
217-540-4336
Nancy.bushur@mamotorworks.com www.mamotorworks.com
About Mid America Motorworks
Mike Yager’s infatuation with the Corvette started it all. What he created from his passion for “America’s Sports Car” in 1974 has grown into not only an astonishing business story, but a lasting legacy to legions of car lovers worldwide. In 1998, the Air-Cooled Volkswagen line was introduced by Mid America Motorworks.
Mid America Motorworks has been a labor of love since 1974, when he started the business with a $500 loan and a collection of Corvette parts and accessories he sold from the trunk of a borrowed car. Today, Yager refuses to use titles like “president” or “founder.” His title is “Chief Cheerleader” because he believes his primary responsibility is to lead and motivate his employees who have enabled Mid America Motorworks to grow and become so successful.
Today, the multi-million dollar enterprise is dedicated to the automotive enthusiasts. Through full-color mail order catalogs and the Internet, it offers thousands of parts and accessories for Corvettes and Air-cooled Volkswagens. Still solely owned by Yager, the company now employs close to 100 people, manufactures a growing line of its own quality interior products under the Performance Choice brand name, and fills thousands of square feet of office, distribution, warehouse, manufacturing, and retail showroom space at its corporate campus in Effingham, Illinois.
You have to be in the know about John Bowman’s passion when he admits he’s “crazy” about Iris, and it’s OK with his wife, Kay.
Iris is the Bowmans’ 1978 Super Beetle — the upscale model of the regular Beetle, with a bigger trunk, nicer wheels and upgraded bumpers, dash and upholstery — that has been undergoing restoration in his garage all summer. It was a gift Bowman gave his wife for her birthday and their anniversary earlier this spring. Now, the blue Volkswagen once owned by a little old lady in New York is a lot of work.
John Bowman bought a 1978 Super Beetle on eBay from an elderly woman in New York and gave the vintage car to his wife for her birthday and their anniversary in the spring. Since May, he's been in the garage restoring the upscale model of the regular Beetle, and he hopes to take his wife, Kay, out for a spin this fall in the finished product.
The VW is the couple’s way to relive the good old days of the 1960s and 1970s at the University of Texas. They hadn’t met, but both drove VWs. He was a bit of a hot-rodder then. He owned several muscle cars (not at the same time), including two Pontiac GTOs and a Chevrolet Corvette. “My 1969 Beetle was easier on gas and insurance,” he said. And he stopped getting speeding tickets on South Congress Avenue.
“Those were the days — going to Scholz Garten for a pitcher of beer,” Bowman said.
Back to reality and the more docile life of retirement in Wimberley and the very cute Iris. This is not Bowman’s first rodeo with restoring cars and trucks. The retired English professor has restored a 1970 Ford F-100 that he sold back to the original owner when the owner’s grandson was ready to drive. “That was our agreement. I kept it for a while until the boy was ready to enjoy a truck driven by his grandfather,” said Bowman, 65.
In his driveway today is a 1978 Ford F-150; in his garage is a 1993 Ford Lightning, a high-performance show truck, with 3,800 originalmiles on the odometer that he found on eBay. Bowman found Iris on eBay, too.
“It’s from the original owner, a little old lady outside from Hamburg, N.Y., so the story went,” he said.
Bowman snagged it and had it delivered on a trailer in May. He’s been tinkering with it ever since.
He makes clear that he’s not a mechanic or expert in restoring cars, but he mentions that he can understand manuals and “figure” things out. It took him all summer to remove the rust from the floor pans and metal heater channels from the engine to the cab of the car.
“I sanded the pans, applied Rust Stop paint and then applied fiberglass. Then I cut out Dynamat (sound proof material made of aluminum) and added new carpet on top,” he said.
Cleaning every inch of the car was paramount. Nothing that Armor All (an interior cleaner), Simple Green (a degreaser) and Gunk (an engine cleaner) couldn’t handle.
“From there, it’s just getting on your hands and knees and cleaning every part,” he said.
The engine is mechanically sound. Next up are the finishing touches that Bowman will enjoy adding: fender skirts, vintage VW mud guards, new chrome wheels with baby moon hubcaps and white wall tires. He went online and found vintage VW stores and people from all over the world who sell individual parts.The trademark small, ornate vase from a person living in Germany will go somewhere on the dashboard. A faux Iris will be placed there.
Lessons learned? “Patience,” Bowman said. “You can’t rush the job, and you live by the rule of what can go wrong will go wrong.”
He finds the work stimulating.
“I love the fact that I come up against something that doesn’t work, but then I figure out how to fix it. I miss the mental challenge of the classroom, but this work gives me a good feeling,” he said.
The Bowmans say they can’t wait to drive Iris daily sometime this fall.
“Taking the top down, driving it around these hills,” he said. “That’s good therapy. And the sense of accomplishment that I didn’t spend $30,000 by taking it to a custom shop.
With a wry eye, Damián Ortega deconstructs the inherent obsolescence behind the technological progress that dominates our lives
For Damián Ortega, ideas and things, far from being connected by logic, have a deeper, unaccountable relationship, amounting to a kind of magic act. It’s a relationship that’s destructive one minute and creative the next, but it’s never less than funny.
Ortega’s new show at the Institute of Contemporary Art – a survey of 19 of his sardonic, mind-teasing works – has the clarity and transparency of positivism (what you see is what you get; everything adds up). It also attests to a love of science and systems. But in various ways – via sculpture, video, photography, and several endearingly klutzy installations resembling backyard experiments – it doubles as a study in entropy and the fallibility of those systems.
Take a work like “Cosmic Thing,’’ the exhibit’s star turn. The conceit is simple: It’s a car manual diagram brought to life. Ortega has taken a haggard-looking Volkswagen Beetle, in battleship gray, and pulled it apart, so that every detachable component, from the door locks to the inner tubes, has been separated and extended in space along horizontal or vertical axes. The parts have been suspended from the ceiling, the logic of their positioning perfectly maintained.
FRANKFURT — It is nice to be an iconic automobile brand in the United States. But as Volkswagen knows better than most carmakers, it’s even nicer to actually sell cars.
While the rare old VW bus or vintage Beetle can be spotted chugging down the byways of America, nostalgia doesn’t pay the bills.
“You have California, the hippies, Woodstock and all the great memories Americans have for VW,” Stefan Jacoby, the chief executive of the Volkswagen Group of America, said in an interview. “But when it comes to the conversion — ‘Will I actually buy this car?’ — we lose our customers.”
Wes Brown, an auto industry analyst at Iceology, a market research firm in Los Angeles that has done work for the German company, puts it more bluntly. The vehicles look good enough, Mr. Brown said, but consumers “don’t know what the brand stands for.”
Mr. Jacoby is trying to change that. As baby boomers reminisce about the summer of Woodstock 40 years later, he is trying to devise a future for a brand in the largest automobile market in the world, at a time when many Americans associate VW more with the past than the present.
After nearly three decades of faint and failed attempts to remake itself in the American market, Volkswagen is striving to recapture some of that old magic without being trapped by it. A central part of the company’s effort is its new plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. Rather than exporting vehicles that fill niches in the United States, VW is angling to complement its commanding position in Europe and parts of Asia by increasing its share of the American market. The company aims to sell Americans a solid, midsize, made-in-Tennessee sedan — probably under the Jetta name — that will compete with the Japanese and American cars that millions of families use to shuttle children to soccer practice, go shopping or hit the road on recession-era vacations
US, August 21, 2009 – Electronic Arts debuted a new playable version of Need For Speed Nitro at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany this week. The Wii-exclusive racer is designed as a more arcade-y take on the license, whilst the PlayStation 3 / Xbox 360 project, Shift, is geared a little more toward those with a penchant for simulation races. I’ve played and previewed NFS Nitro several times in the past and also interviewed the development team behind it.
A new level, Rio de Janeiro, was on display and I took it for a test drive. If you’ve read any of my other write-ups, you will already know this, but Nitro is really fast. It zooms along at a Burnout pace and runs at a constant 60 frames per second — the first time ever a game in the series has achieved that blazing momentum, which is kind of ironic given the name of the license in question.
You can play it any way you like — nunchuk and Wii remote, controller on its side, etc. — but actually, I’ve grown fond of an unconventional alternative that the development itself prefers, too. I simply hold the Wii remote normally, steer by twisting left and right (as you would a key in lock), gain speed by pressing the A button and take drifts by tapping on the B-trigger as I round corners. You might think it sounds weird to control the game one-handed using only the ii remote, but it actually feels very good; there’s something very tangible and satisfying about steering by twisting like that.
Of course, the biggest new addition on display since I last played Nitro was the car show room and the ability to fully customize your favorite vehicles. To demonstrate, EA pulled out a tricked-out VW Beetle, loaded it into the editor and began tooling around. It could bring up a series of Photoshop-like paint brushes and decals, which could intuitively be applied to the car. Twisting the controller would in turn rotate the decals, and they could also be easily sized up or down. In addition, the bodies of the vehicles could be fully painted different colors. All in all, the feature seems well thought out and I’m looking forward to exploring it more thoroughly.
Because of high import duties, the Bug will have a hefty price tag when Volkswagen begins importing them from Mexico
On sale—A slice of history for Rs 20 lakh apiece. The Volkswagen Beetle, the world’s longest running and most-produced car of a single design, will be available in India in three months, offering a Nano-sized ride with the frills of a top-notch SUV writes businessweek.com.
The car that has meant various things to various people—once the quasiofficial vehicle of Germany’s hated Third Reich in the 1940s, the Beetle went on to become the darling of California beatniks in the Swinging 60s—is being imported as a completely built unit from its Mexico plant, and is currently undergoing technical testing ahead of its India launch.
Its hefty price tag, which pitches it in the luxury car segment alongside Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Skoda Superb and the MercedesBenz C Class, is due to the 110% import duty and high safety specifications.
The Indian unit of Volkswagen said pricing the Beetle competitively was a big challenge for the company and blamed taxes and logistics for the high price. “But we are working very aggressively on Beetle’s debut in India,” said Neeraj Garg, Volkswagen India’s director for passenger cars.
The German carmaker, now owned by Porsche Automobile, which already sells the Passat and Jetta models in India, expects the Beetle to have a product segmentation of its own and instead of competing with other imported smaller hatchbacks, most notably the Fiat 500, which costs Rs 15 lakh exshowroom price in Delhi.
Also known as Bug, the Beetle will sport a 1.9-litre TDI diesel engine and a 5-speed manual transmission. Its other features will include rain sensors and cruise control, along with acoustic rear parking sensors to fit into small parking spaces. Its safety features will include ABS, traction control, anti-skid system and standard front and side airbags.
Mr. Garg said Volkswagen was not looking at high volumes but hoped to leverage its brand value before launching its mass-market Polo hatchback, expected to debut sometime later this year. Fiat’s model 500, (also called the Cinquecento) launched last year, has managed to sell just 58 units to date.
“We are expecting a much better response for the Beetle, which carries a very high iconic value,” Mr. Garg said.
Volkswagen’s decision to launch the Beetle comes at a time when rival BMW has put on hold its plan to launch the equally iconic small car Mini in India. BMW, which does not see it as a viable proposition yet, has pushed back the India rollout of Mini beyond 2010 and will continue to focus on bigger sedans and sports utility vehicles for now.
ROAD RUNNER
• Hefty price tag due to 110% import duty & high safety specifications.
• To have 1.9-litre TDI diesel engine and 5-speed manual transmission.
• Features include rain sensors, cruise control, acoustic rear parking sensors.
Read the rest of this story…
