Even though we at Leftlane think that life is too short to drive just one car, we have a tremendous amount of respect for those who stick with a faithful four-wheeled friend for decades and decades. That’s just what the original owner of this 1955 Volkswagen Beetle apparently did after buying the car new and keeping it until she recently passed away.
We love the Bug, but we can’t imagine driving one for more than a few minutes at a time – as cute as they are to look at and as fun as they are to work on, they weren’t particularly comfortable companions even the day they rolled off the line. Still, a California schoolteacher apparently fell for the shape and made the rather unconventional purchase – remember, this was 1955, well before Beetlemania took off. According to the listing, the car was sold new at the same Los Angeles dealer that sold James Dean the Porsche Spyder he drove to his death – an interesting historical footnote.
Although the auction description is short on details, we learned that the schoolteacher drove this Bug just under 44,000 miles over the next 65 years before she passed away in the old people magnet that is Sun City, Arizona.
We’re not Bug experts, but from what we can tell from both the VIN and the presence of the quirky semaphore turn signal indicators, this Bug was actually built toward the end of 1954 production, certainly making this California woman an early adopter. This one looks like cheap fun for an all-original driver, although we can’t tell what the reserve is.
Source: eBay
