Whoever named the color "Pacific" had clearly never seen the Pacific

Cathy and I took advantage of the nice weather and spent the weekend in San Diego, and since we were there we decided to make a pilgrimage to Jack Fisher's backyard, which has suddenly become Type 34 central. Jack is busy getting Gizmo Bob Walton's recently purchased Pacific blue '64 1500 Ghia back on the road, and he has also rescued a '64 of his own. Not long after I arrived with a Type 34 Blaupunkt radio faceplate for Bob's car Bob himself showed up with lots of parts straight from the chrome shop.






Bob's chrome guy does some nice work! The early "pointy" alloy bumper guards came out great, and a rearview mirror arm that was heavily oxidized now looks as good as new. He's good at holding fine detail too — check out the sharp stamping on that Hella headlight ring.




Bob's car is starting to come together and it's cleaning up nicely. Jack even found mint original squareweave carpet and rubber floor mats under a previous owner's improvised carpet installation. Along with all the brightwork and a lot of other restoration parts, Bob also brought the rebuilt longblock. When Pedro Sainz arrived with a freshly powdercoated air cleaner it was practically a meeting of the Southern California chapter of the 1500 Club.



Pedro and Bob demonstrate the proper use of a hammer:




Lots more work will go into Bob's Ghia in the next few weeks in preparation for the VW Classic on June 14th. Looking forward to seeing it finished and back on the road!

Ferrari 250 GT

I think it's safe to say that the designers of the VW 1500 were familiar with the Ferrari 250 GT.




Most obviously seen in the taillight design, but in lots of other details too. John von Neumann of Competition Motors Hollywood fame had a hand in the development of the 250 GT California in the late '50s. Coincidence?

And the Abarth exhaust on Freddy's 1500S takes the similarity one step further.

[images borrowed from qv500.com and Freddy's VW1500s blog]

Blaupunkt speaker jacks

A number of people have asked where they can find Blaupunkt speaker connectors recently. While Blaupunkt's own dual plugs are hard to find, the good news is that the individual connectors themselves are a standard item that is available from any electronics supply source. Known as the "banana plug" or "banana connector" (in German, bananenstecker), this standard audio jack system was designed by Richard Hirschmann in 1924. He was the founder of the Hirschmann company that has for many years been a primary producer of audio antennas for VWs and other cars.




Blaupunkt's version of the the banana connector was a closely spaced dual plug (12mm or 15/32 in. on center), as seen here on an old Blaupunkt speaker I salvaged from a junkyard Squareback.

Modern dual banana plugs are available, but they all seem to be more widely spaced than the Blaupunkt plugs. The 12mm spacing may have been Blaupunkt's proprietary version of the connector. Single banana plugs work just as well as long as their insulators are small enough in diameter to fit within the Blaupunkt jacks' 12mm spacing.




Banana plugs: you can't enjoy Suprakustik® sound without them.

564 silver fabric is sold out

All 35 yards of the reproduction 564 silver 1500 Ghia upholstery fabric have sold! I still have a few yards of 554 (red) and 559 (cerulean) in stock.

VW 1500 Convertible brochure, 1961

I've been waiting to post until something blogworthy presented itself. Fortunately this brochure just arrived in the mail.






Sadly the VW 1500 Convertible — aka Cabriolet, aka Type 351 — never made it into production, but lucky for us the brochure did.

Hollywood Freeway, 1962

A postcard showing the Hollywood Freeway looking north toward Hollywood from the Rosemont Avenue overpass, just north of downtown Los Angeles, on a nice day in 1962. The location is very close to where I live and it looks almost the same today except for the cars. There are a few European imports mixed in with all the American cars — a Volvo P444, an Alfa Giulietta Spider, a Mercedes Ponton and a VW 1200 – and a couple of Detroit compacts – the Big Three's attempt to reckon with the success of the foreign newcomers – but not a Japanese car to be seen. That would begin to change a few years later. As with the Sunset Boulevard photo I posted recently, the goal of my Ghia's restoration will be for it to look like it could be dropped right into this scene.

Andy Holmes shows us how it's done

Andy's stunning late 1961 1500 Ghia makes its debut at Volksworld:




[images by turnhill, nabbed from The Samba]

More photos and the complete restoration story on Andy's restoration blog. Congrats Andy!