Portfolio at NYU

Posted 03.31.05
Bug Out

By David Puner

Dec. 2003

If you happen to drive past the Chimney Rock Inn in Bridgewater, New Jersey, on the third Monday evening of every month, you may notice that the parking lot is packed with old Volkswagens--VWs with air-cooled engines, mostly classic Beetles, Buses and Karmann Ghias. Inside the restaurant (there's actually no inn), past enduring Frogger and Ms. Pacman arcade games, and the Monday Night Football bar crowd, thirty members of the Central Jersey Volkswagen Society II gather in a backroom for the club's monthly meeting.

Mike Buckholtz is the club's president. As a fresh-faced 21-year-old, he is an unlikely air-cooled aficionado. "There's a huge line between water and air-cooled people," Buckholtz explained before the recent meeting. For one thing, he said, you can't go 80 mph in an air-cooled. "That discourages a lot of the young guys from getting interested in them." Many water-cooled kids replace their stock seatbelts with racing harnesses, trading story for speed.

Buckholtz, known to friends as "Bucky," is the only member of the CJVWSII who lives in a fraternity house. At Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, he's studying mechanical engineering and intends to design air systems for new buildings after he graduates. This semester he's designing an automatic can crusher. He graduates next May, which looms as a problem for the club. He predicts the exigencies of adult life--"getting used to getting up every day and having to pay rent and all that"--will short circuit his first love, old Beetles.

He began the meeting. "Christmas party," he announced. "For those of you who didn't know, it's scheduled for January 25th."

The meeting proceeded with other agenda items including a report about revenue the club earned from judging cars at the October VW Show-N-Go at Raceway Park. Bulkholtz spoke highly of the recent Florida Bug Jam, where he and two other CJVWSII members enjoyed a weekend of kegs, bonfires and informal Bug-bonding that culminated with the big air-cooled show on Sunday. "Bug Jam," Buckholtz reported, "is entirely charity-based; to date they've made over $100,000 for some charity."

The official meeting lasted about 15 minutes. Members come to Chimney Rock more for air-cooled camaraderie than for Robert's Rules of Order.

Buckholtz likes to talk Beetle. "I look at the car like it's a big go-kart. It's just fun to drive-having your hands pressed up against the windshield and freezing in the winter because there's no heat," he said. "The big thing with the Volkswagen is that it was always the happy car--just look at the Herbie movies. Everybody knows somebody who had a Bug or has a Bug story. It's more the stories behind the car than the car itself."

When he's not can-crushing at school, Buckholtz is restoring his '67 Beetle from the ground up. The car is currently in scattered pieces inside a portable tent-like garage on his parent's property in central Jersey. He was initiated into air-cooled subculture at 17, when he had a tempestuous '74 Super Beetle and realized he'd have to learn to fix it himself, or wind up penniless and hitching instead. So Buckholtz started interning for Bill Egenton, a mechanic (and a CJVWS founding member) in Bound Brook. But even with mechanical know-how, he still made 18 SOS calls to AAA while captaining the '74 Super, before he finally parted with the decrepit bugger last year. "Half the fun was wondering if it was going to get there," he said.

Buckholtz plans to have his new old car finished in time for the two-day cruise down to next year's Bug Jam. Finished enough, that is--"The car is never really done." He bought the rotten '67 Beetle carcass for $300 and has already put two years and "hundreds of hours" work into it--"When it's done, it'll be a 10 to $11,000 show-car." The cruises, organized convoys, are one of Bukholtz's favorite parts of his air-cooled association. Every year he and a bunch of members, and their cars, camp out in the right lane doing 60 mph and cruise south to Bug Out in Virginia. "A big thing about building a car is the pride--taking it to a show and saying, 'Ohhhh, I did that.'" he explained.

While battered Bugs can be acquired cheap, they require thousands of dollars for parts and labor to get them back into running condition. Bugs in decent shape--those that are mechanically sound, with little to no rot--start at around $2,000. Cars in very good shape, especially rarer, older models and convertibles can go for $12,000 and up. The earliest model Beetles in pristine condition can fetch upward of $50,000.

Professional restorers turn profits of a couple thousand dollars by purchasing $2,000 Bugs and putting another $3,000 to $4,000 into the cars. "A Bug's worth is kind of like a baseball card," Buckholtz said. "It depends on how much an owner thinks it's worth."

Regular Chimney Rock attendees, Arthur and Kimberly van Mourik, find themselves telling their VW story often. The van Mouriks met through an online Beetle club; both drove modern model Beetles and found themselves chatting in cyberspace about a similar dislike for emblem color-schemes on their cars. Six-foot-six-inch Arthur was driving his Beetle in the Netherlands, while five-foot-zero-inch Kimberly and her Beetle tooled around Illinois. Turns out the new and old Beetles are the only cars both can comfortably fit in. "For him it's the headroom--for me it's the lower dash," she said. They decided to meet up at a new Beetle event in New Mexico--so he flew into O'Hare and they drove down to Roswell together. "And we fell in love," Arthur said.

The van Mouriks bought a '58 Beetle (and named it "Schnitzel") in Arizona, which Kimberly, who's a graphic designer by day, is restoring herself. "I do everything--except the welding," proclaimed Kimberly, 32, who has owned over 50 Volkswagens. Arthur, 38, a computer programmer, doesn't work on the cars, except to occasionally help Kimberly lift the engine.

Former CJVWS president, Art Neary, who founded the club in 1990, also found love through air-cooling. He met his wife, Aimee, through her brother, a CJVWS member, who is in charge of repairing all Zambonis, from Connecticut to Virginia. Turns out Zambonis have Volkswagen engines. "We had a Volkswagen wedding," said Neary, who's in his mid-to-late 30s and sports a ponytail, which makes him look more biker than Beetler--turns out he's both and he rides his Harley in the snow. "There were five air-cooled Beetles in the procession. Everyone in the wedding party drove a Beetle with their partner."

The first incarnation of the club, called simply CJVWS dissolved when Neary vacated the presidency in 2000, pleading the responsibilities of adult life: wife, kids, job, home. He still has his Baja Beetle though, and his kids love it, he said.

Buckholtz brought the club back to life in Oct. 2001-CJVWSII. He was encouraged by, among others, former boss Bill Egenton, who had become a good friend. "They saw my enthusiasm and I was willing to try stuff that hadn't been done before," Buckholtz said. Since restarting the club, he has increased CJVWSII's show presence and scheduled more cruises. "Billy calls it passing on the torch," he said.

Egenton, who Buckholtz cites as the driving spirit of the club, works six-day-weeks at his shop, typically putting in 14-hour-days, and won't take on the presidency--"It's overbearing for me now, and I don't even have kids." Egenton has seven Beetles, including a '63 that Buckholtz found "rotten" behind a cider mill. "I gave it to Billy, because his favorite year is the '63," Buckholtz said. "Air-cools is what keeps him happy."

Egenton said that Buckholtz's work ethic at the shop is analogous to his effort with the club. "He was a great worker--a tornado--he worked like hell." Egenton is one of the few members aware of Buckholtz's desire to step down. "We need young, spirited people to carry it on," he said. "Most kids now buy a Honda, or whatever, and put on a set of wheels and a loud muffler and call it a day," he lamented.

Case in point: when a 20-something friend of a club member, with a vertical strip of facial hair below his lower lip, introduced himself to members at Chimney Rock, he said sheepishly, "I've got a '91 and a '95 Jetta--basically all the stuff you guys don't like." A tense silence followed.

"Well, you always need something to pick up parts in," a venerable air-cooler quipped. Harmony restored.

As the club dispersed for the month, Buckholtz talked about future effort. He intends to beef up the club's website, which he has neglected recently, despite his 10 hours a month of club work outside the meetings.

Out in the parking lot after the meeting, there was a lot of chatter and some air-cooled VW grumbling in the chilly night. Neary, wearing a snap-button collarless windbreaker with "Art 'The Prez'" embroidered on the front, was standing next to a water-cooled Cabriolet (his "driver") that was about to make the hour-and-a-half trek back to his new home in the Poconos. He and Buckholtz, President I and President II, watched as CJVWSII members pulled away-some in their prized possessions, some not.

"He's gonna hit it," Buckholtz hooted as Carl Reitzel and his sly grin crept toward the lip of the parking lot in his gleaming two-tone '57 Beetle with fat chrome aftermarket tailpipe trembling in low-rpm gurgitation. Reitzel's souped-up '57 darted from the Chimney Rock lot, first pulling sideways, rear tires spinning desperately, before suddenly biting into the damp blacktop, straightening the car out and launching it into the night.

After a few more peel-outs, a couple of the biggest produced by minivans, the Chimney Rock manager appeared in the parking lot. "Scotty's been real good to us," said Buckholtz-wistful that he was not going to burn any rubber. President Buckholtz eased his GMC pickup out of the lot for the 40 minute drive back to school.
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