1967 Type III Fastback
While the Beetles and Ghia are okay to travel in, Rob thought it would be nice to have a slightly more modern (and quieter) car to do long trips in, and so the hunt was on for a Type III. Rob really wanted a Notchback, and looked at several before the Fastback featured here came up for sale in Twizel.
After being stung buying a car from only photos before, we decided that we travel to twizel to check the car out throughly prior to purchasing. A road trip south took place and a test drive took place. We were impressed with the car's performance and quiet running. There were a few bad repairs, but on the whole it was a pretty solid two owner car.
Still not wishing to rush into things we returned home to mull it over, but eventually decided to buy the car and negotiated a price of $2200 as long as the car had a current warrant and rego. Another road trip ensued, this time in the '59 Beetle with Mark and Tomoko onboard to drive the new car home again. Upon pick-up the car needed a good half litre of brake fluid and several litres of oil (how it got a warrant we don't know). It was also discovered that after driving for a while that the ignition switch stopped working.
After a general tidy up the car was put into service, and soon had its ignition problem sorted (with a hard-start relay), was lowerd a couple of splines at the front and lost its wheel trim...
In the wake of moving into our new house, the car was stripped of its wings, all the old bad repairs were fixed, and the car received a nice new coat or two of paint. White vinyl GT stripes were then added and the car was outed as Das Alpentour 2006.
During the Das Aplentour trip the ignition started playing up again, we thought we had it sorted just before taking the car to the Taranaki VW Nationals, but it was not to be and the car gave trouble right up until the trip back to Christchurch, where after being stranded on the Foxton straight and spending an unscheduled night in Fielding we discovered it was the distributor rotor that needed replacing. All that grief and stress for a $5 part... ah well.
The Type III is now sorted and running well and has some period accessories to boot -- a wind screen visor and door visors.