Finnish Fastback (long).

[patmor@utu.fi (Patrick Joel Morton)]

T3,

A friend of mine here in the frozen, swampy wastes of north eastern Europe
(and also a subscribed "lurker" on this list) is the proud, new owner of an
Irish Green, 1971 Fastback. Since I found the FB for him and he probably
won't post anything about it, I will and he can flame me later in person.

Anyway, ever since I purchased my '67 Square almost a year ago, we have
been looking for another Type III that he could buy. He wanted a Squareback
as well, and we had hoped to find something that was the same era as mine
(for parts buying reasons). It has been a struggle. We live in the southern
most part of Finland, and strangely, most of the cars that we found for
sale were located either in Lapland, or somewhere too far north to just go
and have a look. I don't want to drive 16 hours to find that the car in
question in a heap.

Last week, I received the latest edition of, "Volkkari", the Finnish
Aircooled Volkswagen Association's quarterly magazine, and it just happened
that there was a Type III Fastback for sale about 195 kilometers away. The
fact that it was advertized in this rag meant that it might be a good car.
So last Saturday, we made a roadtrip in my Square deep into the Finnish
countryside. What we found was pretty amazing.

When we got there, we found the Fastback in a large barn, along with a Ghia
Cabriolet (brought here from Florida), a Beetle Cabriolet and another
Fastback amongst a huge stash of late model Type III body panels, engine
parts and other Volkswagen goodies. More parts were found in the basement
of the barn and in an adjacent building (where four American muscle cars
were resting). This guy was obviously into cars.

Two years ago, the previous owner had done a pan-off restoration to the FB,
everything was undercoated, new seals everywhere and all of the rust had
been properly cut out. Apparently, he had done all of this work for his
wife so that she could use the car as her daily transportation around town.
She did just that, until she reversed into a back hoe that was parked in
their yard ...  The insurance company totalled out the car, and paid the
owner $5,000.00 (don't ask me how they arrived at that huge sum).
Afterwards, it was sold off to the guy with too many other cars. He
repaired the back end which only required a new bumper, new rear hatch, new
rear glass and some paint. Nothing else was wrong with it.

The Fastback itself is/was in great shape. It is the "no extras" model,
i.e., no chrome, no clock, one sun visor, no side markers, reverse lights
are not wired, etc (all of which we have now added) . It has dual Solex
PSDITs (it came with spare Dell Orto 34 FRD carbs too) and unlike my
Square, the usual IRS transmission (I am jealous about this!). Everything
works and I have to admit that it is a very straight Type III. Even better
is the fact that our VW garage just bought a 1971 FB two weeks ago for
parts. I don't think that there will be any problem finding spares anymore
for his car ...

We made a deal to take the FB back to Turku (our home village) and have it
checked over at our local aircooled garage. Although the engine was
billowing smoke, we made it home somehow after buying 5 liters of oil on
the way. As I was pulling up the rear in case anything went wrong, it took
only 30 kilometers before my windshield was covered with brown oil slime.
Not good.

The mechanics gave him two thumbs up and yesterday he bought the Fastback
for a reasonable price.

So now the engine is being rebuilt, the front end will be dropped one turn
and we will spend some time getting it slightly modified to fit the owner's
interesting personality. Overall, it is a great looking car and I am
personally glad to have some Type III company. Pictures of both of our cars
are coming soon - uh, not to list, but to the Greg's pages. Stay tuned.

Patrick Morton