More Push

Author: Jens Broedersdorff

My contact with the Volkswagen virus was quite early; my grandmother managed her small newspaper kiosk in Wiesbaden to become a lottery receiving office, this was in 1963 and I was 4 years old. To get the lottery tickets to the main office each Friday evening, she bought a 7 year old ragtop Beetle. I well remember the evening trips, when I was allowed to accompany her, sitting in the rear trunk, sometimes together with my sister, having a perfect look into the star-spattered night-sky.

So it was clear that my first car had to be a Beetle, a 1957 ragtop Beetle which I picked up at the local steel yard. It was followed by a modest number of mostly earlier examples.

Friends could easily be inspired for the little car with its special handling and easy souping capabilities too. One could find comrades-in-arms in daily traffic, one of them, driving a `59 ragtop Beetle equipped with a Riechert “Speed Rex” dual carburetor setup, placed the virus of tuning and souping for better performance, and soon our Beetles and derivates made even more fun to drive.

This was how it all started, the fever still keeps me going. The actual Beetle is my more-push test-car, a `53 Oval. I have equipped it with Porsche 356 pre A / A brakes, so we can check out our souping setups safely.

The following photographs, mostly taken with very old cameras like a Plaubel Makina for example, which explains the sometimes bad quality, give a brief impression of “the good old times”, there was now internet, everything was searching advertisements and buzz-marketing.

Too there are some photos of my motorcycle enthusiasm, here my mantra is: the more levers to handle during the ride, the better.

And now enjoy the photos!

Getting acquainted (9 Photos)

Beginning of serious tuning (20 Photos)

The next step (10 Photos)

more-push experimental car (10 Photos)

Motorbike activities (3 Photos)

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