California Dreamin'

As I hail from the Golden State, I was relatively psyched when we moved to Virginia Beach. Comparable latitude coupled with miles of lovely coast placated my inner beach girl. I was surprised on my first trip to the local beach however by the lack of groovy surf mobiles, namely, the lack of old VW buses with surfers, skimmers, etc. piling out of them. Where have all the VDubs gone, I wondered?

It turns out, according to VW technician Dave Morill at Checkered Flag, that they are still around, but that the moist air makes keeping them up especially difficult in Hampton Roads and The Outer Banks. Dave’s worked at Checkered Flag for about 9 years and has a ‘56 VW Bug that he tinkers on. He says that there are probably 4 or 5 tech’s at Checkered Flag that work on the older models. "Everyone else is too young to remember the old air-cooled engines," he laughs. While they see more models from the 70's and 80's, Dave maintains that the folks at Checkered Flag are more than happy to take a look at your vintage Volkswagen. They also have the skinny on where to get parts, both locally and nationally. Supply channels for those models ‘70 and newer are more active than those for earlier models. Dave told me that a lot of parts do come from the West Coast but that there are a couple of good local sources as well.

I did some poking around, too, and found that www.oldbug.com is a good resource as is this ebay "neighborhood" and locals seem to swear by The Bug House in Virginia Beach.