Funkengroovin Wednesday - Renovated Van

Vagabondblogger still has photos from the Nasr City Car Market on hand. This is a renovated van, with a different engine. No one can ever be sure what they fit into or onto the cars in Egypt to keep them running, and only the proud owners are willing to talk about their endeavors. Also, note the interesting fix with the windshield wiper solution. Vagabondblogger is guessing on that, and hoping it's not oil (one never knows). The man sitting in the van was not the owner. He was just babysitting. Again, the cars are packed into the lot so tightly, it's difficult to get a straight-on photo of the front, rear or side views.



























ARTICLES: (Most articles this week are about bugs.)
All the articles have great pics, so check them out, even if you don't like to read. jalopnik.com, as usual takes excellent photos, making Vagabondblogger a very angry woman. (She's jealous.) Oh yeah, and all you VW lovers living near Hartford, CT should go to the Wadsworth Atheneum for an exhibit that will entice even the non-car museum-phobic family members (like The Boss Man and Number One Son): Stare-way to a daring exhibit Wadsworth invites you to ogle as long as you'd like

The Wadsworth Atheneum's provocative new exhibit "again: serial practices in contemporary art," encourages us to look, to peer, to scrutinize, to stare — and even to peep. This exhibit of 125 works from the Mickey Cartin collection reminds us, as if we needed reminding, that life is ugly, violent, ghoulish, ghastly — and, despite this, grotesquely beautiful.

Yet another series of stunning images by Swiss artist Arnold Oldermatt, a former police photographer, depict the hypnotically beautiful aftermath of grisly accidents involving Volkswagen bugs.

What: again: serial practices in contemporary art

Where: Wadsworth Atheneum, 600 Main St., Hartford

Through Dec. 30

For information: (860) 278-2670 or www.wadsworthatheneum.org,

Sample Photo here. More photos available here at jameskelly.com,
and here , and then a YouTube video of his photos: Crash Course: The Accidental Art of Arnold Odermatt...

Vagabondblogger thanks her nephew for sending her the following article: LEGO Group in Deal With Volkswagen

BILLUND, Denmark—Suddenly last summer, there they were in Billund. Two experts from the Volkswagen car manufacturer – seated at a conference table in Idea House.

In their hands they held a beetle. The Beetle. The one and only Beetle. Their own “Volkswagen Type I” – known all over the world under a host of local names: Beetle, K&aumlfer, Boble, Coccinelle and many more. And now it was being carefully studied – in LEGO bricks.

Today, a completed sample of the finally approved Beetle stands on Steen Sig Andersen’s desk. It’s ready to hit retailers’ shelves in the second half of 2008.

The VW Beetle will be in the shops next summer. The LEGO Group and Volkswagen have already agreed to bring the model along to several car exhibitions – and it will also be on view at LEGO events.

It all started with a $50 Volkswagen bug

"When me and my brother turned 16, our dad bought a 1961 VW bug for $50. It had a broken crankshaft. Dad decided he was going to teach us car maintenance. We took this old Bug and dropped the engine. Dad had someone replace the crankshaft and then we put the engine back in," Mark said. "It ran for awhile but dad wasn't satisfied, so we took the engine back out again and then put it back in. We did it enough times that we could have that engine out and on the ground in 20 minutes," Mark said with a smile.

Local VW, English car clubs held yearly festivals

The festival had one of its best turnouts in years, with 56 Beetles, dune buggy Volkswagens, Scooby Doo-esque Microbuses and oddities such as a 40-year-old VW pickup truck on display. "The interest has picked up in Volkswagens," says Charlie Tupper, one of the show's organizers.

A few participants are regulars, such as Wade Ammons Jr. of Spanky's Classic VW's in St. George. He has automatic transmission Volkswagens from 1968-74 as well as a 1962 edition and brought six models to the show including a 1968 vintage car towing a specially designed '68 with nothing but rear seats and wheels that he dubbed a "Bug-and-a-half."

He Loves His Bugs

THE CAR: A 1955 Volkswagen Beetle

A FAVORITE MEMORY: He enjoys taking it to car shows. The car has some unusual features -- one is the oversize European ragtop, the last year VW made them that large, and he's got the fully functional, semi-four blinkers on it, too.

1959 Volkswagen Beetle

VW Bug central figure in brewing code enforcement battle

PORT CHARLOTTE -- A little Volkswagen Beetle decorated to look like a giant hot dog has become the central figure in a brewing code enforcement battle.

The car, parked near U.S. 41 in the Charlotte Square shopping center, advertises The Dawg House, a restaurant in the strip mall that boasts 30 different styles of hot dog from the Chicago to the Coney

Part girly girl, part gearhead

But these stereotypes don’t include Emily Holben. With her four inch black patent leather heels, funky gray-blue plastic framed glasses, perfectly flipped short brown hair and a string of pearls, she not only knows how to sew on a button, but she knows how to use a CV boot clamp. Holben doesn’t stop to file down her perfect oval fingernails or worry about chipping her red polish as she rips apart her starter. She’ll worry about that later.

Just because her work in progress happens to be a bright pink 1970 Volkswagen bug, don’t discount the fact that she’s helped build it from the ground up. Holben is unique because she’s chick who knows cars – or at least Volkswagen bugs from 1964 to 1972.

The diagram above shows all the modifications that Holben and her father have completed on her 1970 Beetle.

(Click on the diagram for a bigger and better view.)



Today's video has scenes from a car manufacturing plant, freeways, and junk car heaps (including one with a Beetle on top).
Freeway Of Love - Aretha Franklin (HQ Audio)