What is it about Super Beetles that just appeals to me more than any standard Beetle could?
I mean, was it that I spent my formative years from 1974-1978 being lugged around in a Brilliant Orange 1974 Super Sedan so that no doubt inclined me to Supers more than Standards.
My earliest memories of a watching a film? 1974’s Herbie Rides Again
My earliest memories of a watching a cartoon? 1974’s Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch
Was 1974 just a magical year for me? Being 4 years old. Spending almost all my time in a 74 Super? Seeing Herbie for the first time as well as Wheelie and my child-mind anthropormorphizing my mothers’ car?
I mean, Herbie is not a Super. Wheelie was ambiguously Beetle-esque. I loved them both and my mother’s car.
Did my little child-mind just merge all of this into some kind of self-reinforcing fantasy?
Perhaps it is my odd oft-unspoken underdog nature?
I mean, let’s face it, in the US at least, Super owners are viewed at the bottom feeders of the classic VW air-cooled world. I don’t know how many conversations I’ve read online in which some asshole has to come into a perfectly great Beetle conversation I’m having and go all asshole with their “Oh. It is just s Super. Just trash it.”.
I could go to prison for the thoughts that go through my head as to the things I fantasize doing to those kinds of people. And as they lay bleeding out on the floor, I step over their soon-to-be-corpse and continue whatever conversation I was having. (Yeah. I can be easily swayed over being non-violent in the 21st century now.)
Anyway, I digress.
What is it about Supers that just stirs the juices? Especially the 1303 models?
I think for me it has to be one of those key things that the Super-haters despise so much… that rounder front end.
I love it.
I love the curves on it. I love the slight bulginess of it.
I love how it looks without a bumper.
I love how the front of the car looks when wider front tires are installed and it is slightly lowered.
Lowered just a bit to just tuck those tires in a bit more.
For me, the 1302/1303 front end, when modded just a tiny bit, somehow brings out what I like to think of as the Porsche DNA of the car.
It is my childhood fantasy of what I dreamed my mother’s 74 could look like. What it looked like in my mind’s eye.
It is Wheelie come to to life.
I think that is why I like Supers.
Yes. I think so.