DFL 10 Year Birthday

Couple of cameraphone shots from Der Fieser Luftkuhler VW Club's 10th birthday party. Crappy, I know, but unfortunately this is all I got as somehow the camera got left back home.





Managed to sneak in while the bouncers looked the other way :) The whole deal turned out to be very smoothly organized evening in really cool old movie theater in Gross-Gerau. Along with the club branded beer, one of the highlights of the evening was a rare footage club member Georg known from VW Speed Magazine had found from Bug In #1 or #2 (the US one) filmed by German VW enthusiast back in the day.

Here's a link to proper photos by Andi, one of the club members.

To any DFL guys reading this blog; many thanks for the invitation and for the great time!

Link: Las Vegas Bugorama Pictures

Shots of my two favourite new cars debuted in 2008 show season (at least new for me..)


Henry Marcena's Split 'Vert is just awesome and sits right.


Even that this is the model that a certain 356-dude from Espoo would call "the fat chick of the 356s" or "the Super Beetle of 356s", this is one of the best modified 356 I've seen both in pictures and in real.

Shots by Volksarama from Town Square and Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Shots by Strictlyair from Town Square and Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The Strictlyair and Volksarama galleries are the best sites for US events shots.

Olari Swap-O-Rama

Some photos from Volkswagen swap-meet held twice a year in Olari, Espoo.


Another DWL takeover :)


Juses Ford Pick-up and �yris' Pagoda Mercedes.


Bus that changed hands from Jaska to Vesku and then forward..


Valtteri's Split got the "best development potential" award..


..while Tomi has utilized the development potential in his Split to the max :)

2008 FSRA Nationals

Some photos by Sebastian Vuorisalo from Finnish Street Rod Association's event last weekend.

2008 Wild Viking Festival

Some random snapshots I took yesterday in Wild Viking Festival bike show around the Casino of Hanko.






















Cylinder heads and valve covers looked familiar but turned out to be little bit of coldwar era industrial espionage.

Misc Shots: Wolfsburg - Stockholm

"Audi sy� latua" :) Last stop for couple of days in Stockholm, 5800 kilometres and one million dead insects later.



Last summer we did 2200 km Chimay/Camberg tour with 4 aircooled cars and took a ferry from Helsinki to Rostock, Germany. That ferry is bit pain in the ass as it is boring as hell, it takes 24 hours leaving Helsinki at evening and arriving to Rostock at following evening, which means immediate check-in to hotel or driving in night through Estern Germany.

This time I didn't have to worry so much with the car etc so it made more sense to take the ferry to Sweden and then drive though Sweden, Denmark and Northern Germany. On a distance to Hamburg this equates 1000 km more driving from Stockholm than from Rostock. No problem in a modern car.

So if I take that 1000 km off that it takes to get to the "play grounds" from up North, then the two weeks consisted of driving around 4000 kilometres in Germany, Belgium, France and Switzerland.


And overtaking manouvre of the year award goes to.. Well, it took almost a year.


Sweet home Nordic!


One more shot from Autostadt; they're taught how to drive in "stau" at very early age :)


After first initial "WTF, this chauvinistic shit isn't real" reaction I realized, as these reserved spaces were first slots after the hotel reception doors, that this must be a security measure so that the female drivers can feel safer when parking during the night. Got to admit it was bit funny to see one elderly lady parking her Opel over the line dividing two "female only" parking spots :)

Autostadt

Smile? Me? Yeah, right.. While I liked the Mercedes Museum and the old Volkswagen Museum, this automotive Disney Land wasn't for me.

I love Beetles and Buses and Ghias etc due to their styling, awkward mechanics like the air-cooled engine, Cal Look and Resto Cal etc. I'm not into modern cars no matter what the brand is (except perhaps Porsche) and Volkswagen or Audi today are like German Toyota, so not really interesting. As Volkswagen factory very rarely backed motor sport it lacks the same racing heritage Porsche and Mercedes may have (Auto-Union did but that was pre-war stuff and before the merger anyway). And the other brands the corporation had more recently acquired, I don't know.. I didn't simply find enough interesting stuff per acre (yeah, it's large) in AutoStadt.

Autostadt is a happy place, you can stay at nice Carlton-Ritz hotel, spend a nice day in the theme park (or at the old museum), have a nice meal or coffee and it hides the Wolfsburg City, which isn't attractive like many of the other German cities are. No need to go out to the City when all you need to your visit is nicely tucked in same area (bit like the Casinos in Las Vegas).

Nicest place to visit in Autostadt was the ZeitHaus displaying vintage cars and automotive milestones from various brands. Also some of the most presentable vintage Volkswagens had been moved there from the old museum.