· Chris Hammond · 3 min read
Have you seen my 1973 VW Super Beetle? VIN# 1332543365
I am on the hunt for my first car, a 1973 VW Super Beetle, last known to have travelled to Fort Drum in New York.
When I was 17, and my brother was 16, my parents bought us a car. It was a 1973 VW Super Beetle (Vin/Chassis # 1332543365). Honestly, I didn’t want it. My brother wanted a bug, but I was the one who went with dad to test drive it, and I was the one who fell in love with the car and drove it during my JR/SR years of high school in Northern California, then hauled it to Rolla, Missouri for college.
I loved that car. In the summer of 1998, my father and I redid the suspension on the car and sent it to Bryant Motors in Sedalia, Missouri to get new wider/fiberglass fenders and a new paint job.
The car was there for a good 3 months, maybe more. When we got it back, it was gorgeous.
Over the next year or two, we replaced the motor with a 1776 built by Al out in Wentzeville, MO.
I got out of school, started working, and the Super Beetle got parked in my parents’ garage in St. Charles, MO.
In early 2001, it was time for my parents to move to South Carolina, and I was going to stay in Missouri. I couldn’t really keep two cars, so we sold the Super Beetle on Ebay. It sold to a family in Alton, Illinois, not far from where we were. They had two young boys (if memory serves me correctly) and the car was for them, fitting as that is how I came across the car.
Over the years I wanted the car back, but I was never able to track down any history on Ebay (they limit how far back you can go). One day I was digging through old hard drives, getting them ready for disposal, when I came across a backup of emails from an 18-month timeframe, a timeframe that covered summer 2001, when I had sold the car on Ebay.
Digging through those emails, I was able to track down the name of the family who had purchased the car, and via Facebook, I was able to track down the father. I reached out to him inquiring about the car. It took a while, but when he replied, he told me the car had gone to Ft Drum, NY with one of his boys in the Army, and was sold to another soldier there.
Since that time, I’ve scoured Craigslist, Ebay, and Google Image search in hopes of finding my 1973 VW Super Beetle again. I have been unsuccessful, but I hold on to hope that one day I will find my first car and buy it back.
If you have any leads on the car, please let me know. You can fill out the Contact Form here.
-Chris Hammond, Wildwood, Missouri
