Tallahassee Democrat Community Column #15, 11/10/92

My name is Joe Clark and I am a Volkswagen Enthusiast.

At last! Out of the closet and onto the streets! No longer hiding my Hot VWs magazine in shame, nor skulking off in secret to attend Volkswagen shows. No more mumbled, "Uh, can we take your car?"

It has not been easy to confess my faith. We VW fiends are a persecuted lot. Not long ago, I was idling at a stoplight in my '68 VW Bus when a shiny jeep-load of immaculately groomed young men pulled up beside me. As the light changed, one of them hurled an "I smell granola!" at my rusty conveyance -- with its admittedly ponytailed pilot -- before roaring off in a cloud of dust. By the time I thought of a suitable comeback (something involving the distinct odor of Vitalis, as I recall), they were half a mile ahead.

I hate granola.

I came by my religion honestly. I recall a time when both my brother and I could fit into the well behind the back seat of my parents' 1962 Beetle. Every car wears a facial expression when you're young -- and that one looked like it was in a permanent pout. Then at sixteen, Dad recommended the same for my first car and -- hallelujah! -- my eyes were opened. I've been recycling VWs ever since.

Most memorable were the '71 I bought for a hundred dollars and had running the next day; the '63 Karmann Ghia Flintstone-mobile, with the rare accessory Mystery Electrical System; the Beetle Convertible with mismatched fenders and missing bumpers that ye t emitted gale-force cool; and the '62 split-windshield, hippie-style, I'll-get-up-that-hill-by-Wednesday bus or van or whatever you want to call it. Cars with names -- real names. Half Fast. Major Hangover. The Flying Dutchman.

I have performed the rituals and sacraments of my faith. The parking-lot roll-start, both with and without hills. The pumping of the brake pedal. The roadside engine removal. The invocation of the deity upon busting a knuckle.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Many of you have also felt the glory of the Volks' Wagen -- the People's Car. You have owned one, or been stuffed into one, or laughed and pointed at one as its engine burned up in the emergency lane. You are aware of the totemic significance of this machinus ex dei in the collective unconscious, of the trinity of values it represents: Frugality, Simplicity, Reverse-snobbery.

You also know of its dark past. Hitler sketched it, and called it der Kraft-durch-Freude Wagen -- the Strength Through Joy Car. Ferdinand Porsche (por-sha!) did the details, and it became the Nazi's jeep, with four-wheel-drive and amphibious versions t hat made the Beetle look positively normal. After the war nobody wanted it. At first.

There is the tendency to make light of this connection, for there is great irony in the fact that an idea born in the mind of a genocidal madman now conveys busloads of Deadheads on one long, strange, retro flower-power trip after another. Ein Welt, ein Volkswagen, as it were. Even so, to look too long at the bulges and curves and wild, staring eyes of a VW Beetle is to shiver uncontrollably at the design face of 1930's European Fascism.

Yet this is but the dark side of the force. They are delightfully simple cars that you can actually repair without computers or analyzers -- and good thing, too, since most air-cooled VWs are pushing at least twenty and tend to be a little ambivalent about running. Their design is spartan and yet sufficient, always with a little nudge and Teutonic chortle. Your lawnmower is more complicated.

Why tithe on a new car -- an Integra or Performa or Contenda -- when a widow's mite keeps me in funky wheels?

Yes, brethren and sistren, I confess my faith. I drive a vehicle that is older than Madonna. I admit to having Volkswagen parts of obscure function prominently displayed on a bookshelf. Why, just the other day I came across a Genuine, Post-1967, Westfalia Camper Accessory Tent, and was nearly transported right then and there.

In fact, that's what the folks at VW call the very automobile I drive: a Volkswagen Transporter. Beam me up, Herbie.