The original Volkswagen Beetle is a lovable economy car that took many forms and uses. Say, in Mexico, where it was a popular taxicab until the early 2000s. In the United States, it was mostly a miserly economy car. This one, however, was the world’s cutest (and probably least useful) police car car. YouTuber Mustie1’s well on his way to restoring the rusted and clapped-out punch buggy cop car.
God, I’m getting old. In my head, “35 years ago” is the late 1960s or early 1970s. No, 35 years ago, is 1986. Anyways, ignoring my cloudy concept of the passage of time and how I occupy that space, it seems that this cute, and severely rusty Volkswagen Beetle was abandoned sometime in the mid-1980s. The Beetle’s decked out with an adorably authoritarian black and white paint job, complete with an oversized cartoon-style police hat on the roof. D’aww.
The Beetle’s seen better days — it’s been sitting in a parking lot for 35 years. The tires are destroyed and now semi-circles. The rear brakes are seized completely, and it’s unclear if it’ll ever run. The floorboards are completely rotten, par for the course for an old Beetle in Massachusetts.
Apparently, according to some insight from the video, the car was donated to the police department and used as a “safety car,” used by staff to visit schools and do traffic duty and go to parades. No high-speed chases in the Beetle’s history, I guess, but the narration from off-camera also states that it got used as a racing pace car at least once, so that must have been pretty funny to see. The car’s history is discussed a bit more around the 05:00 mark.
In Mustie’s latest update, he got the damn thing running! Sure, there was a lot of work that needed to be done; mouse nests removed, rear brakes unstuck, some minor electrical work sorted. But, it ran. And drove, somehow.
Mustie1’s whole channel is dedicated to buying and refinishing old rusty abandoned cars, many of them old-era Volkswagens. Like, this rusty VW Beetle that someone in California gave up on. Or his $900 G-body Cutlass, which needed frame repairs.
I love content like this. Yeah, we can watch big channels soup-up supercars or whatever, but how many people have the means to get access to cheap and broken exotic cars? It’s fun to repair, or at least watch someone else repair, old rusty eccentric economy cars and small engines.
Give Mustie1’s YouTube channel a gander.
