The Beetle - The Origin Story

 

Way back in 2018, when we were shopping for a car, we tried several models, but the only one that Ann found interesting was the Beetle. The one available in Columbia was orange, and the dealer wouldn’t budge off of MSRP. I did a nationwide search and came up with one in the state of Washington. It was used, but had only 600 miles on it. The salesman said all that he knew was the original buyer traded it in on a new Ford Explorer. That leads me to believe either: A. He had encountered some deep snow; or B. He attempted to transport someone in the rear seat who had some say over what car he owned.

This Washington dealer was more accustomed to selling Explorers than Beetles, it was the middle of winter and he wanted this one gone. Asking price was by far the cheapest in the nation, even after paying $1,000 to have it shipped to COMO. The semi-truck car hauler stopped in the middle of Providence Road to unload it – wisely opting not to enter my neighborhood with its lovely tree-lined streets, but many low limbs. My new little guy had been hanging off the back of this car hauler all the way across our great nation in early February. It was so covered in road soot you couldn’t tell what color it was. The semi driver had rubbed one tiny porthole of clean on the windshield to see enough to drive a couple of blocks to my house. When you got in the car it was totally dark, aside from the little bit of light streaming in this viewing portal. I thanked the driver, who seemed to be in a hurry to get on down the slushy road and make the rest of his deliveries. I then immediately, and slowly, drove to the car wash to see what I had just bought. Underneath all that wintery blackness was a shiny, perfect Beetle. You couldn’t tell it hadn’t just rolled off the assembly line.

Fast forward to 2025… and we’re moving to Washington. Although it may have seemed apropos to return the Beetle to the state from whence it came, both Ann and I preferred to do the four-day drive shoulder to shoulder, rather than behind one another with a three-second following gap. Everything we were taking with us fit in the F-150 just fine. With us both working remote jobs we didn’t really need two cars. We were staying at an Airbnb downtown the first month, which only had on-street parking of unknown availability. After that we had no idea where we would be staying, or what the parking situation would be.

A few months prior we sold the Corvette in preparation for the move. The Corvette was a 1994, owned in three equal parts by myself and my two sons. It was Oliver’s first car, and a good high school car, as his high school was only a mile away and the Corvette was always up to that task. Henry’s high school car was a 1981 El Camino on ridiculously tall wheels with very thin but wide tires… also a good high
school car. Both cars, historic as they were, were in-town cars. For out-of-town trips the boys used the Beetle or the truck.

When we purchased the Vette, everyone said the same thing: “Two teenage boys and a Corvette, your insurance is going to be insane!” Quite the opposite. When I insured the Corvette, my insurance company mailed me a check. You read that right: it was cheaper to own it than not own it. How can that be? It was because the boys were insured on the Vette, and it was worth less than our truck or the Beetle – especially when we bought it in 2020 and the Beetle was only about a year old. We sold the Corvette for $6,000, roughly what we had in it after driving it for five years.

Back to the Beetle… it’s still a good car, but I just finished payments on the F-150 (four years at 0% interest – cheap money!). It would be kind of un-American not to have a car payment, so if I get a full-time 9-5 somewhere, we could just buy a new car here. If I get a remote job, get a job with a take-home car, or don’t get a job at all, we can probably get by being a one-car couple, or maybe one car plus a motorcycle. Whatever the future may hold, right now I’d rather have money in the bank than a VW Beetle in a garage 2,000 miles away.

This leaves you, dear reader, with a great opportunity. I challenge you to do a nationwide search on Autotrader for a 2018 Beetle. Once again, my Bug is the best deal in America. You had better act quickly. Test drives can be arranged via Oliver. For the right price, I can even be talked into doing a delivery.

https://www.facebook.com/share/17jhMjgqD3/