VW BEETLES

...And I mean the real Beetles 'of the people' as opposed to the Yuppie Beetles you can buy these days if you feel like spending twice as much on a little car as a car is actually worth just for ponce-value. I remember this one fondly - not sure why I photographed it in black and white (a teenage phase I guess) as it was a beautiful pale blue colour with a dark blue roof. It was the first car I ever drove - I had been nagging my dad from I was about 6 to teach me to drive so when I got to 16 I was fit to burst at the prospect of having to wait yet another year until I was old enough to get a provisional, so my dad, as a treat let me drive my mumś beetle (notice not his own Saab!) on my 16th birthday. I not sure that was a great idea in retrospect as it probably made me even more unbearable for the 366 days between my 16th and 17th birthday. Anyway like most 60s babies I have a soft spot for the original Beetles - they were the car of my childhood, the first old bangers we drove in the 80s. But by the 90s there were few left and we all missed them and secretly moaned. Then around the millennium they brought out the replacement yuppie Beetle - nice enough - they do stand out as different as the original did but the market was all wrong. They were aimed young rich singles, not families with loads of kids and little money. I still remember driving to Blackpool in a Beetle in '77 - 4 people, 2 suitcases, a tent, airbeds, camping equipment, where did we put it all?! (It had practically no boot) And they had those fake leather seats your legs stuck to on the one hot day every summer if you had the misfortune to be wearing shorts. That was what Beetles were really about, not those silly vases on the dashboard the new ones have. You are probably wondering my point by now? Just that 70s were Beetles driven by family men, 80s were old Beetles driven by teenagers, 90s were no Beetles and noughties started off as new poncy Beetles BUT in the past month I have started to notice them all over once again in Glasgow and around it - lovingly preserved Beetles of all colours - all around 1970 models. I have seen one or two every day for the last month, and all different ones - I would even kind of like one myself - well as a second car - for nostalgia's sake :-)