VW New Beetle Wagon

[stitchdup]

A couple of years back  Claude Thibodeau shared a custom new beetle van he had built. The idea has sorta festered until a couple of days ago when my alpine hit a pause (i like to do foil in the sunshine)so it hit the bench. I'm using the rear roof from a revell pt cruiser snap kit and the rest is mostly tamiya new beetle. Now in the vw tuner scene theres a custom style called oem+ and means all the parts come from mostly higher end vw group cars, though some ferrari and mercedes wheels are ok, so thats the style this will be getting. To acheive this i have removed the rear seat from an audi e-tron and  used 3d printed seats from blackbox for the fronts. The wheels will be resin bentley continentals. at the moment i'm filing the body to match the bug as the cruiser is much rounder than the bug and this has to look unmodified. The engine is a 3d printed vw r32 vr6 and i might canabalise a fujimi kit to get the 4x4 parts. i want this to appear stockish when its finished

 

[johnyrotten]

Pretty interesting looking beetle. Looks better than the "ute" conversions I've seen on both new and old. Good call on the p.t. cruiser roof, perfect shape.

[milo1303s]

Very cool Smyth Performance should have done this !!!

[peteski]

That's pretty slick Les. Excellent choice of the rear half donor. Some conversions don't come out looks very good, but this one has excellent potential.

[stitchdup]

thanks guys. I cant take the credit for the roof conversion though, i'm using the same parts Claude did as they worked so well on his

[espo]

Like the concept and the way, the rear portion of the roof fits. 

[milo1303s]

This is the model your talking about !!! correct ?

[stitchdup]

7 hours ago, milo1303s said:

This is the model your talking about !!! correct ?

yes, thats the inspiration but i'm going more stock looking

[Rod666]

A really crazy build, I'm curios for the final result!

[Zippi]

Looking pretty kewl so far Les.  

[stitchdup]

a little more progress. i trimmed one chassis? rail to clear the engine and the rear seats are very close to lining up with the door trim so i've been adjusting that. since the trim is so clse i'll swap to the audi front seats too

[iamsuperdan]

Very cool.

 

[Kenmojr]

Neat idea. Will be watching...

[stitchdup]

I think I'm ready for filler on the body. because i use an automotive acrylic stopper filler i'll give it a coat of primer first so it works at its best. the interior is nearly ready for paint but i think i'll make up the glass first as the rear of the interior is sitting lower than i'd like but a couple of spacers might fix that, and the glass from the kit prob wont fit but i'll try cutting the front door glass away at the plastic trim. there might be a small gap above the door shut doing this but it will give me stock trim to start from and should mean only making the rear side glass, but if the gaps too big i can always open the door glass. the black rubbers i might add to the body so the glass has somewhere to sit. and i've bagged it so it sits low. this made dropping the suspension really simple as the struts are joined inside the bags and only meant trimming the rear helper springs and adding a couple spacers to the front struts. i just need some decent weather to paint now

[Zippi]

All the mods are looking good.  

[stitchdup]

got some primer on this morning so now i can get started on the filler. you can see how i've reshaped the cruiser rear to be more bug shaped better now

[stitchdup]

fillers on, so now i'll let it sit for 3 or 4 days to go off. this filler sinks a lot but it gives a decent pin hole free surface. because of this i use scraps of plastic and files to get it close so the sinking isn't such an issue

[BK9300]

To me, body work at this scale seems so daunting - its amazing to watch it being done well!