My first car: 1958 Volkswagen Beetle

This is not my first car – it was never this good. Or left-hand drive.

Still, the 1:18th scale Volkswagen Beetle sitting on the desk in my office is a daily reminder of how I got from there to here – and how lucky I am to have completed the trip.

The 1:1 Beetle cost me $400 in 1972 and it taught me everything I needed to know about driving and surviving.

The wipers were dreadful, the headlights were miserable, the handling was sketchy, there was no synchromesh on first gear, and the brakes demanded lots of pre-planning.

So I had to drive.

Compared to other cars I had driven by the time I qualified for P plates, and even my Suzuki TS185 dirtbike, the battleship grey Beetle was surprisingly good.

My parents' Austin 1800 – the model was nicknamed the 'Land Crab' – was a true munter, and got me scored down to a B-minus at an advanced driving course run by Peter Wherrett – a pioneering motoring journalist and racer best known for an no-punches-pulled ABC television program called Torque.

Still, the 1800 was more plush than its predecessor, an Austin Freeway station wagon – I should mention I won a demolition derby at the speedway in Canberra driving one – and vastly better than my dad's commuter cars: a Ford Prefect and a Toyota Tiara.

By the time I passed my license test in the 1800 I had already been driving for more than five years thanks to an FE Holden 'paddock basher' and more than 50 acres of suitable scenery at the property of my best friend (then and now) Mark Walton. Ah, the joys of 'three-on-the-tree' shifting.

Those very same paddocks also became a training ground in the Beetle, as I learned about sliding sideways and handbrake turns while preparing to venture into rallying. Foolish as it sounds (now), on a good lap around our private dirt-track oval the oil-warning light was always on.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The $400 purchase price for the Beetle came thanks to an investment by my father, one of two things I have to thank him for in my car life. The other is that he was such a dreadful driver – truly awful in every way – it made me promise to always do better than him.

For me, back then, the Beetle was a giant financial stretch and many weeks I would do my driving with just $5 worth of fuel – think about that for a second against 2022 prices – thanks to a part-time job on the register at Woolworths. I knew things were tough when I had to kick the floor-mounted reserve lever – no such thing as a fuel gauge, or a radio I now recall – to drain the dregs before heading for a top-up.

It was liberating to take my car on the run to high school, or down to the twisty roads in the Southern Highlands of NSW, or to Sydney on weekends, or off into the forest for some novice rallying.

Back then, growing up in a government house at Campbelltown in the far west of Sydney, my Beetle was freedom.

To give you some background, my car was the arch-rival to the Mini driven by another mate. His car was boxy and had the engine and driving wheels in the front, mine was rounded and had the engine and driving wheels in the back.

His car was vastly quicker, particularly on the run from the Friday-night drive-in when he would try to embarrass the owners of Holden Torana XU1s, but mine was fine for me.

I remember some good things about the Beetle, from its excellent reliability – whoops, there was that tendency to burn oil – and the big rectangular back window that set it apart from earlier models with twin windows or a small oval. I had bragging rights thanks to that window . . .

But the bad stuff included six-volt electrics and turn signals that were semaphore arms that popped out of the B-pillars, and often failed to respond to commands from the driving seat. As for the crunchy first gear – I soon learned to live with it.

Over time, the battleship grey bodywork was contrasted with a bright yellow boot – I stopped, he didn't – and my youthful enthusiasm saw it re-painted in matt black. What was I thinking? Or was I just (way) ahead of today's adoption of matt paint?

We (Mark and I) also learned about changing the engine – I had two, the spare from a 'parts' car in the front garden – in less than 30 minutes, as well as the other routine mechanical work from brake adjustments to changing the oil. Thankfully, a friend owned a tyre shop and would lend us a trolley jack for big jobs once he had closed at midday on Saturday.

As for the driving, I remember a brisk run down to the Kangaroo Valley where I had to draft Mark onto the handbrake to slow for tight corners; the brakes were so hot at the bottom we melted ice from a picnic lunch against the (four-wheel) drums in a pointless attempt at cooling.

Then there was the time I hit a nasty patch of spilled diesel on a corner and spun backwards into a service station. Nothing hit, no-one hurt . . .

I tried to upgrade the six-volt headlights but nothing worked, not even a giant driving lamp from an ancient truck.

I learned how to jump-start the car when the clutch cable snapped; and how to drive without the clutch until we could swap the gearbox from the parts' car, complete with the luxury of syncho on first gear.

I also installed four-point racing harnesses and a padded cover for the driver's seat that provided some cornering support, but could never afford to upgrade to the Momo steering wheel I craved.

Rallying? I was keen but the Beetle was not.

We had a couple of goes, slip-sliding at the tail of the field, but eventually I saw the need and got into a Datsun for my first win and a love affair with hotrod 1600s that continues to this day.

I'm also a Beetle lover and, apart from the 1:18th model in my office, there is a '67 Beetle in the garage. It's been converted to 12-volt electrics with Hella LED headlamps, and starts first time every time. No oil leaks, either . . .

Eventually it will be the Beetle I dreamed of having in 1972, perhaps even with a big-bore engine and four-wheel disc brakes.

Which reminds me of the day I traded my Volkswagen on a Honda S800 sports car. Not one of my better decisions, as it turned out. They gave me $50 for the Beetle and I cried as it was driven away.