God Jul Och Ett Gott Nytt År

When the leader dictates, us acolytes have to follow suit. So here you have it, a merry christmas and a happy newyear, courtesy of Die Volks Freunde. Cheers!!!

Sightseeing out of heaven.

This is a page out of a book with nothing but shots of Sweden out of the sky up above. This should be a junkyard close to Malmö. Or it used to be, because as far as the Swedish part of my brains understood, it has been turned into a golfcourse by now. One only wonders what happened with the lot of vintage tin. Scrapped?

31 Horses in Town

Looking up the skirt of yet another Swedish belle. A '54 threefold Soltak that made a little detour through fugly Germany. But right now these thirty horses are residing in a nice East-Flanders village called 'Deiremonne', stable of the horse Bayard. Tempie is restoring the hell out of it and by restoring I mean using anything but the best. Have a look.

Spreading the Gospel

Oh beautiful Scandinavian landscapes. I've seen this lighthouse myself on one of my Nordic trips. I just can't remember where it was, but maybe Fons can help me out. He just returned from a one week round trip to Sweden, picking up a nice white '66. One more Bubbla to be driving the Belgian Autobahn.

Driving around a strange, cold and dark country is no fun, unless you can share it. So Fons took his Dad on this adventure. Now that's cool. I wouldn't be able to get my father out of his seat solving sudoku's, for a run around the block in my Twingo. Let alone an unknown car, prone to break down whenever you least expect it.

Back home in Belgium, the white 66 can join the blue 67 he and his girlfriend went to Sweden for earlier this summer. But not for long as the white one is for sale as Swedish fun can be expensive. If you want I can put you through to Fons, just holler.

Karmann Electric

As is known as a true fact I'm a radical websurfer. And almost nothing in the world of VW amazes anymore (I know, modesty is not always my forte). But when I saw this ecofriendly project, I was in awe. Pardon me, as this car resides in the USA, so, well out of my regular hunting grounds. Still every normal treehugging Scandinavian would love to run this through the pine tree forests up north.

This is the oddest engine bay of a nicely restored Ghia, or according to the January Hot VW's, rather called modified, as the drivetrain went through some changes. A bus tranny and porsche trailing arms are now mated to the 67 bodywork. What's most out of the ordinary is off course the engine. A high power electric engine normally pushing a hydraulic forklift pump, altered to fit in and propel the Ghia to high speed.

And this is to an electric engine what regular pumpgas is to a, dare I say, ordinary Karmann. There's up to 1800 coldcranking Amps at hand, and that is massive. I only wonder about the weight as, I have some big 1100 Amp batteries at home for my powersupply, and they weigh in at 600 kilo's.

And last but not least, this is an artists rendition of what the final result should look like. I'm personally not sure on the teledials, though I kind of like them, but maybe not on this car. The script is also great, made by yet another artist who, I guess, loves this project. I love the tongue in cheek VOLTSWAGEN.

Soltak Oval

But no need to worry as there are still some nice deals to be made in the land of Plenty. How about a ragtop '56 oval with attitude and some lovely wheels to boot. I've seen them priced cheaper than this one, but hey, it's a driver. So enough said, go get it!

Old crappy vw Fälgar

Sweden, you just got to love that country. Whilst looking for a good score I stumbled upon this add for old vw wheels, 4 of them, but only 2 had tyres on them. Luckily the original centercaps were present, or else the poor man would never ever been able to sell them for the hefty sum of 1000 sek ;-). Yes you've read it right the first time only a hundred euro for original sprintstars. Needless to say I was on the phone in no time, but unlucky me, they were sold already. Maybe I should start to surf some more.

Deep Blue Sea

This isn't a view on the Baltic Sea. In fact I don't know where this picture was taken. It could be America's West Coast surf, but judging on the logoed drivers door I'm thinking more towards the east, as Far East as you can go. I don't have a clue what they wrote down about it, but a lovely picture it is, stolen from the Flat4 blog.

Paneled type Three

News from the Norvegian Front. The Regenstadt Zombies have unearthed an oldschool cal looker. And a rare bird it is, a type three panelvan is really rare, although all it took Volkswagen to build it was pop out the glass windows and replace them with metal panels. But boy are those panels rare now.

But the RZR aren't oldfashioned and already planning a redo of the car to a more contemporary style. A bit ratty/racy, and please not to low, this would do fine. As cars are made to run fast not to scrape asphalt, you're better of buying a bulldozer to do some roadwerks.

Skrot once more!

Just an average day on your average junkyard in Sweden. An oval, an early big-window and yet another oval, rusting away somewhere in the woods. A sad sight for sore eyes.

Turtle is an E.T.

This is the lil' sister of my own precious Five-Niner. She has also found her way from the cold and snowy Sweden to the cold and rainy Belgium in the hands of the ever so slow Turtle, member of the One Man Club out of the Grimm Hills.

The Empi's on the first pics have already found their way to France and are replaced by these golden ET-mags all the way from Norway, add a GAS-installed Riechert kit on a rebuilt 30/36horse and some period accesories and you go all the way to become Oldspeed.

By the way, this is how it looked while still in Sverige. Isn't it sweet. And I'm just so jealous of the colorcoded ragtop in that roof. If I manage to keep on to my car for once, I might just start looking out for a ragtopclip and some welding.

Hot Sodd

According to the connecentis on the Cal Look Lounge hot Sodds are next big thing in the altered bubbla movement. Might as well be as cal look is already on the rebound and nostalgia dragracers are peaking the very minute you read this. I don't want to belittle these two very nice American ways of changing from stock, but soon they will both be out of fashion (although will cal look ever be out of fashion?) and only their true fans will cherish them, and maybe just as well. Maybe the time has come to show what a nifty thrifty racecar the beetle can really be, Eurostyle.

I don't really know if this would qualify as another hot sodd? Maybe it's to much rally and to little outlaw. But for a more concrete definition of a hot sodd or maybe even helping out defining what it exactly is and really should be, go over to the Lounge.

Wild Goose chase

This picture says it all! On my way to Germania, to check out an ultra rare Aircooled Doppelkabine. I drove the 200 km back and forth with my trusty 16V Twingo. Check the speedo, as everyone who knows me will tell you, you'll never catch me speeding on the highway. Underneath my gorgeous but mega-crappy Mooneyes rearview mirror is my brand new TomTom, a birthdaypresent from my Girl, to always show me the quickest way home.

Oh yes, the T3. As the seller already told me over the phone, it wasn't very nice. In fact, not very nice at all. Lots of seamrot, a multiplex covered truckbed and welded shut under-bed doors so the under-bed storage was unaccesable. So I skipped it again, but at least I had a look. Maybe the next one.

Tysklands T3

Finally, Dr.Jeckill will be getting some action, although short. Tommorrow I'm off to Tyskland, better known as Germany. At only 210 km from my boat, I found this rather rare aircooled Doka. That's right, the same sort of doka I copped out of last month, but too close to what I call home to not at least go and have a look at it, maybe even touch. The seller already warned me it is not "Moeders Mooiste". But hey, is a T3 ever?

T3 Westy Owners are Hot

As seen on the Samba classifieds. What better way to sell your T3 Westy than posting some amateur pics of your girlfriend in the nude, chatting away. What strikes me, T3 people seem to be of a different breed than your regular Airhead. They lean much more to the split screen driving hippies of yesteryear, going to festivals and raves and smoking a lot of pot. Proof of the latter is on the counter, a healthy dose of Ben&Jerry's to keep the munchies away. You don't fool me.

Porker-crazy

This is one of the reasons Svenska Bubbla was a bit on the backburner. I was trying to move up the automotive scale a notch by trading my little Red for a more potent crossbreed, a VoPo. Look at the joy on the faces of these 70-ties escapees all courtesy of the little targa-topped sportscar.

This car tempted me into this foolishness. I was going to have a look at this one while in Stockholm, picking up the dubbelhyt pickis. But a friend of mine warned me about this car, for it already was for sale for the past two years. So there must be something fishy going on with this California import.

But a seed was sown, so I started looking for a 914 in Belgium. I even went to see one, seemed like a good deal, an all original 74 2-liter on baby-fuchs, rustfree, almost. Lucky for me I had read up on the Ugly 914 and the illustrous hell-hole. From the very first look on this car I was in love with the Ravenna Grün, but it was spoiled with badly bondo-ed patches, it lacked some of its looked after parts, had a hit front and rear and worst of all a lot of rust in all the typical spots, including the dreaded hell-hole under the battery tray. It had eaten it's way through the car so I could easily put my hand through the right heaterchannel. And the seller also assured me of the perfect engine, but never actually had heard it running as there was an oil-leak.

So, I'll stick to my red-over-blue-over-black-over-alabaster, Rocksolid '59 for the time being. I know it can beat three-five-sixes any day, so I'm happy.

Swedish girls have long legs...

So no wonder all the Scandinavian playaz look for highroofs. This blog seemed dead for the last few months (a bit like mine I'm afraid), but it looks like Fusentast is back. So go ahead and give his counter a boost to keep him going.

Watch the road

Another valuable lesson learned, the hard way, don't park your car in the back of a trailer. This is an excerpt from an old Swedish drivers guide book. Kind of stating the obvious.

Collectors fantasies

Having problems storing your precious vintage cars? Well stack'em three high. Ok, You just can't call a Golf II precious or vintage, it even is farfetched calling it a car, but it's all about the system. Nonetheless, take notice of the top three cars, or should it be tüp drei cars? Two notches and a plain old square.