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79% of our readers thought that $25,000 was a hubba-fied price for 1984 Dodge Daytona Turbo Z , but maybe that's because 80s nostalgia hasn't taken a firm enough hold of our culture yet. That's why we're going with a car everyone appreciates: Herbie The Love Bug! Unlike what you'd experience with your $21,750 General Lee Replicas , you won't keep running across other Herbies out there, because the world Herbie-to-General-Lee ratio is about 1:150 these days. This '63 Beetle has had an obsessively thorough restoration, and the price shows it: $20,000. Cool car, but 20 grand worth of cool? You decide! galleryPost('NPCCPHerbie', 6, 'Herbie The Love Bug On Sale For 20 Grand'); [ Craigslist Los Angeles , go here if the ad disappears] 20 G's for an exact Herbie The Love Bug replica? ( polls )
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Welcome to Down On The Street , where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. As I keep saying, the air-cooled VW Beetle is the most common type of old vehicle I see on the streets of the island. By far the most common. As an former (and probably future) Type I owner, I like the clattery little beasts- unadjusted valves, crazy handling, and all- but it would drive just about everyone crazy if we had the two DOTS Beetles a week that their numbers dictate. Since it's been almost a month since the last one , however, today is Beetle Friday! What model year is this car, really? I've arbitrarily selected 1964, but here's no way to tell from these photos, and I don't care how much of a VW zealot expert you might be. Oh, sure, the door handles, rear window, taillights, door handles, gas gauge… and you can cite chapter and verse about a hundred other details, et freakin' cetera, but this is no one-owner, all-original...
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Welcome to Project Car Hell , where you choose your eternity by selecting the project that's the coolest... and the most hellish! Yesterday, the "get out of jail free" supercharged Beretta edged out the "must stand 100 feet back to take the photo" Mazda Millenia in the Choose Your Eternity poll , in a 54:46 split vote. For today, we're going with a couple of cars suggested by 24 Hours Of LeMons -loving readers who were inspired by the Corvair and Peugeot 505 Turbo racers to look for even better LeMons entries… When you think about a Chrysler-engined British car, the Jensen Interceptor is probably the first thing that comes to mind. While the Interceptor makes a fine Project Car Hell candidate , its perceived value to Jensen masochists aficionados is such that you'll never find one for anywhere close to the 500-buck 24 Hours Of LeMons limit. Hold on, though- what about the Bristol 408 ? Powered by the good ol' reliable Chrysler 313 , the Bristol combined...
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Sometimes months can go by between my photographing of a DOTS car and posting those photographs. Today's car is a good example; I shot the original photos last August, but the island is overflowing with air-cooled Beetles and I have a glut of photos of such cars (yes, Beetle fans, I know I should be posting more of them... and I will, promise). But this particular exposed-engine Beetle, which I'm arbitrarily calling a '69 (though it could be from any year during the 68-72 span), got in some sort of messy collision in the meantime and then moved across town. At first, I thought I was looking at a different car, but checking plate numbers told the whole story. So what we have here is your standard mildly hot-rodded late-60s/early-70s Beetle, with exposed engine but retaining the factory wheels and hubcaps. This could easily be the original engine, or the 15th, and the displacement could be anything from 1200cc all the way up to a stroked "How much money you got?" mill...
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newVideoPlayer("60s_VW_Bug_Cheapskate_476.flv", 463, 387,""); Thanks to a basic design that didn't change much for decade after decade, VW was able to slap ridiculously cheap price tags on their clattery little air-cooled machines. Sure, the heaters never worked and the valves wouldn't stay adjusted, but who cared? Cheap is smart!
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Anyone want to take a guess on the year of this thing? The taillights, 4-lug front wheels (rears are using adapters) and what appears to be a swingaxle rear suspension would seem to indicate 1968... but we all know how parts tend to get swapped around on Type 1s, particularly when it's a Baja. Anyway, it's been a while since we've seen an air-cooled VW (unless you count this 914 as a VW), so today will be Beetle Friday. Alameda was a serious Baja Bug city back in the 70s and 80s; several of my high-school classmates drove them, and I had a Type 3-powered '58 that had been horribly butchered into a cruel parody of a Baja by a previous owner. But now it seems that we're down to just a single example on the whole island (unless there are a few hidden away in garages). Ah, the old crankshaft degree wheel! And that's the de rigueur Bosch 009 distributor- you can just barely make out the number in the photo. These things actually do amazingly well off-road... but so do...
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