Jackie’s Bug | 58 VW Ragtop

My better half, Jackie, is a Volkswagen Girl.  It’s one of the things that first attracted me to her, other than the fact that she is beautiful, smart, funny and talented.  Up until three years ago when we bought our Kia, she had never owned any type of vehicle other than a Volkswagen.  That, my friends, is a Bug Girl.  She maintains that VW people are special people.  “Gluttons for punishment,” a friend’s dad used to say.  Whatever the case, the bond between lifelong VW people is undeniable.  Jackie’s dad was a Bug Man, back when Bugs were all over the road.  VW shops were everywhere, and guys worked on them in their spare time out of their garages and basements, as was the case with Jackie’s dad.  Her very first car was a gold 1958 Bug with a canvas sunroof.  She got it for her 16th birthday.  She wanted a gunmetal gray Oldsmobile 442, but got the Bug instead.  Her dad took black electrical tape and put the numbers “442” on each door.  Being the good girl she is, she never complained.  The picture above is the only picture we know to exist of the car.

Jackie’s Bug quickly became one of the most popular and recognizable cars at Walker High School.  It embodied everything that was fun about driving a VW.  It didn’t have a back seat, you sat on milk crates.  It didn’t have a key.  You stuck a screwdriver in the ignition switch and turned.  It had a choke handle.  On cold mornings, you pulled the handle while turning the screwdriver to fire up the 36 hp engine.  If the car wouldn’t crank, you jiggled the cables on the 6 volt battery.  The sound system was a transistor radio wedged in between the open glove compartment door and the Holy Sh*t Bar.  The Holy Sh*t Bar is the handle that was on the dashboard of the earlier Bugs before being moved to above the passenger door sometime in the ’70s.  Originally intended to aid in getting out of the vehicle, what they were really for was, in a moment of motoring crisis, the passenger grabbed onto the bar and yelled… well, you get the picture.  And, being a ’58 model, it had no gas gauge.  This was a luxury that wasn’t added to the VW until 1961.  Instead, it had a reserve tank handle on the front firewall.  Run out of gas, turn the handle, go another 40 miles.

Jackie taught several friends to drive in the Old Gold ragtop, and interestingly enough, they all wound up owning VWs themselves.  The little car was an absolute blast to ride in, although I never rode in it with Jackie.  Her sister inherited it after Jackie got a ’67 model when she went away to Georgia Southern.  Although I’m sure the ’67 was a nice enough little car, there is no way it could have been as much fun as the ’58 Ragtop.  It had a back seat, a factory radio, automatic choke and a gas gauge, after all.  After the ’67, Jackie purchased a ’72 Super Beetle which she still owns.  As I said earlier… that, my friends, is a Bug Girl.  The ’72 is now safely parked in storage next to her older brother, my ’69 convertible.

Whatever happened to the ’58?  We found out years later that after Jackie got the ’67 and went to college, her dad sold the car to our friend Raleigh, who worked with him in his garage.  Raleigh sold the car to a friend of his, who wrecked it and sold it for parts.  That’s the type of thing you wish you never knew.  However, if there is a Rainbow Bridge for cars, and I’m sure there is, the little gold ’58 Ragtop is waiting for Jackie at the front of the line.  No back seat, no ignition key, no gas gauge, the transistor radio playing “Brown Eyed Girl”… Still Cruisin’!  –J.