Drop The Top | Hit The Road

I love convertibles.  There is nothing like putting the top down and hitting the road, particularly on a beautiful fall day or a warm summer night.  Contrary to popular belief, summer days are not the ideal time to ride in a convertible, particularly during the dog days in Georgia.  Sitting down on black leather seats while wearing shorts is like sitting on a grill.  The problem with riding with the top down in the spring and autumn is that when dusk falls it gets cold in a hurry.  Jackie and I were at a fall reunion picnic at Vogel State Park in the North Georgia mountains a number of years back.  She wanted to put the top down on our Cabrio for the drive home.  I warned her, but she insisted.  About half an hour down the road the sun started to go down.  She had me pull over on the side of the road and we put the top back up.

I’d like to say I’ve always loved convertibles, but that’s really not the case.  The first convertible I ever rode in was a beat up old Oldsmobile 88 that belonged to the guy across the street’s father.  We would take it joy riding from time to time, always with the top down.  It wasn’t a joy ride unless the top was down.  I turned sixteen that summer and, for about fifteen minutes, drove a Myers Manx dune buggy.   It was technically a convertible, only I wasn’t allowed to put the top down.  Technically, it wasn’t my car.

Through the early part of the Seventies, the convertible was all but phased out in the United States.  Finally, in the spring of 1976, a Cadillac Eldorado billed as “The Last Convertible” rolled off the line. That was the end of convertible production by the American car manufacturers, until the mid-Eighties when Chrysler began selling the LeBaron with an after-market convertible top option.  Sales boomed and in 1985 Cadillac re-introduced the Eldorado Biarritz convertible.

In the summer of ’76 I spent a week in Daytona Beach over the bi-centennial Fourth of July.  A friend of mine drove a big white 1973 Chevy Impala convertible.  He would put the top down and four or five of us would cruise up and down the beach enjoying the scenery.  After that I was hooked.  I promised myself I would have a convertible one day.  In July of 1983 that promise was fulfilled.  Being a Volkswagen guy, I bought a 1969 VW convertible from a buddy.  I paid him $500 dollars and a canoe for it.  The car was in pretty rough shape.  It had a couple of mis-matched fenders, as was common with VWs back then.  The back floorboard was rusted out and the top… well it didn’t have a top, only a frame and a boot cover.  None of that mattered.  It was a VW and it was a convertible.  We put the boot cover over the top frame, a piece of plywood over the rusted out back floorboard and hit the road.  I drove it back and forth to work all summer. 

There turned out to be a family connection with the car.  Jackie’s dad was a Bug man.  Like a lot of guys back in the Sixties and Seventies, he worked on VWs in his garage behind the house.  I thought my buddy told me he had bought the car from Jackie’s dad.  When I first met Jackie, I told her that I had a convertible that I thought may have belonged to them.  She told me no, they never had a convertible.  One thing the little car had going for it was that it had an engine that had been highly modified.  Her dad had hot-rodded the engine.  And he did a great job, too.  It was strong through the turns and on the straights.  You could drive it on the freeway and not get ran over.  Of course, that was back before there were knuckleheads in Chryslers and Mustangs driving on I-285 like they’re in ‘The Fast and the Furious.’   

That fall, I parked the car and began restoring it.  I had fooled with VWs my whole life, but had never done restoration work.  It was an eye-opening experience, to say the least.  It took a year and a lot of work.  The rusty floorboard was fixed with fiberglass.  The tires, seat covers and door panels were replaced.  The body was sanded and painted bright red.  Last but not least, a new black top was installed.  The trim was replaced on Thanksgiving morning and we drove the handsome little fellow to dinner at my parents house that afternoon.

Six years later the Bug went to the body shop for a proper restoration and a new pearl white paint job.  We were told that the pearl white would never be able to be matched should anything happen to the body.  It was painted a Volvo beige instead.  Five or six years later, while being serviced, a chain lift fell on the hood.  The hood was replaced and the car was sent back to the body shop, only to find out the Volvo beige had been discontinued.  The paint was matched as close as possible, but you can see a difference.  We should have stuck with the pearl white.

We bought my daughter a 1987 white VW Cabriolet with a white top and an automatic transmission for her sixteenth birthday.  Her mom drove a ’99 Cabrio.  For a time, we owned all three generations of VW convertibles.  I was a happy man and a proud papa.  My daughter eventually bought a Honda Civic and I inherited the white Cabriolet.  It was a great little car and drove it for about a year and a half.  But eventually it got to the point where I was putting about two quarts of transmission fluid in it a week.  We bought a Lincoln, I inherited the Cabrio and the little ’87 white Cabriolet was donated to a charity foundation.

By 2015, the electrical system on the Cabrio was pretty much shot.  We sold the car and I drove Jackie’s 2000 Beetle for the next five years.  The 2000 Beetle was the poster child for electrical problems for that decade and ours was no different.  The ’69 had been put into storage and we were both missing having a convertible.  So in January, we came full circle, trading the 2000 in for a blue 2014 2-liter turbo RLine Beetle convertible.  I always loved the Cabrio the best, but this little beast is in a category all its own.  Not too long after we bought the car, we were heading out I-20 to Madison for dinner with Jackie’s sister and brother-in-law.  Jackie was texting and not paying attention to what was going on.  I was cruising at eighty mph, passed a car and let The Beastman climb up to ninety.  Traffic was light, so I decided to let it continue to climb.  We were running ninety-five and crept on up to a hundred.  “Well, honey,” I said, “we’re sitting on triple figures.”  “What do you mean?” she asked.

“I mean we’re sitting on triple figures.”

“You mean we’re going a hundred miles an hour?”

“Yep.”

“Oh, that’s great, Jimmy, get us a ticket!”

She then leaned over and looked at the speedometer.  “Are we really going a hundred?” she asked.  “On the nose,” I replied.  Sitting back in her seat, she said, “Wow.  It doesn’t feel like we’re going a hundred.  It doesn’t even seem like we’re riding in a Bug.  Nothing’s shaking, rattling or sounding like it’s about to fall off.”  I laughed and eased the speed back down slowly.  Too bad we didn’t have the top down.