74 karmann ghia convertible

i bought my 1974 karmann ghia convertible was I was 15 years old; it was my first car, but I never drove it. it was a deteriorating rust and bondoed together car, with a crooked nose that was practically taped to the front. with me in the passenger seat, the car was driven from my dad's welding shop to our house, which is maybe a span of a thousand feet. then my dad pulled it apart; I mean, he pulled skin from every bone, bagged and labeled the useable parts, then put it all away.

for ten years, the body of the car rusted away on a rotisserie that my dad built. through birthdays, graduations, every major event, the little ghia (then red) stayed suspended on the rotisserie and rusted away. there were only 80,000 convertible ghias ever put into production, and in real life, through all of the Volkswagen festivals I've been too, I've never seen another 74 convertible, which is kind of a bummer because it's such a beautiful car.

five years ago, my dad finished the body work. in the above photograph, my 1974 is the one in the background, that beautiful blue, shiny body that is on the lift in his garage. 

in the foreground of the same photo is another 1974 karmann ghia convertible that my dad found in Clearwater and brought home yesterday. he's been hunting for another ghia to cannibalize for years, because despite all of the parts we've saved and collected, we still had those tiny parts we were missing, which would have made it impossible to put together mine.

my dad says my 1974 will be done by the day Langston is born. this is serious business with all these baby blues coming home at the same time. I always imagined that, even when I was 15, riding around in that beautiful car with a scarf in my hair, my baby and a picnic basket in the backseat and my husband next to me.