Zac’s L620 Savanna Beige ’67 Beetle is an honest example of brilliant design and simplicity. At 50 years old, it’s still doing what VW of old had intended it to do as his daily driver. Thanks for sharing your story with us, Zac!

I’ve been saying for years that I wanted another L620 ‘67. I owned one once, about 18 years ago. As I typically do though, I sold it in favor of some other beetle which has long since been sold. I purchased my car on February 19th of this year. I had known about it more than a year or so prior, but passed on it in favor of a road ready savanna beige ‘67 since I had no garage at the time to get it roadworthy. Not that I regretted the purchase of the other car(who’s body was a little rough), but I still wanted the one I was originally after. About February 12th or 13th, I got a text from my friend Brad with the link to the Samba listing of the car. I’m friends with the seller, so I immediately sent him a text expressing how I still wanted his car. His reply was, “buy it!”, but I’m married with two kids who had only four months prior purchased our first home, so I had to convince my wife that I was making a good decision.

Surprisingly, I was able to talk her into it and a week later the ‘67 was in my garage. The deal was that when I got the “new” car ready for daily driving, I was to sell the other car, so that’s what I did. I had vacation planned for a week in March and I spent a lot of that week in the garage, getting acquainted with my new to me Beetle. I was a bit rushed though, as I had struck a deal to sell the previous car before the new one was ready. The idea was to get the new car ready in a week, while still driving the previous car, and seamlessly transition to the new one. As is generally the case though, things didn’t go as planned. The car did run, but that was about it. The doors were in pieces, the wiring was a mess, the wiper motor was incorrect and not even in the car, the headlight switch was wired up, laying in the trunk and broken, it had a faceplate for the radio, but no radio, door panels for the front were missing, rear panels weren’t installed, three flat, dry rotted tires, no brakes, the list went on and on. So I got to work, replaced the brakes all around, tracked down a ‘67 wiper assembly, a Sapphire V radio that worked, and I even had a spare headlight switch, so that was also fixed. A friend of mine has a shop, so I got some new tires. I needed seatbelts for the rear since my two kids would be back there, installed them. Vacuumed the car out, replaced the rubber floor mats, removed all the add on old man accessories, put the doors together, installed some pop out rear windows I had laying around, tracked down the ‘67 seat belts I needed for the front, installed them, replaced the transmission mounts, replaced the engine compartment seals, new trunk seal, door seals, deck lid seal, bumper bracket and over rider support seals, swapped out the steering wheel in favor of a spare I had that was in better shape, installed the engine and it was ready for it’s first drive. It ran great, but would not idle. It didn’t have the correct carb, so I needed to track down a 30 PICT-1. Luckily, my family is into VWs as well and my stepdad had one. I had it rebuilt by the local VW guru, installed it, and it purred like a kitten.