Video: The Cost of Restoring a Classic VW Beetle

Video Overview:

Download/Print parts build sheet HERE.

Video Transcript:

Hi, I’m Sam with jbugs.com, and it’s done… kind of. Like I said in our last video, we’ve got things planned, but those things are still kind of up in the air. But to this point, a couple of you guys have asked, and I’m sure even more of you are possibly curious, what have we spent so far in this car? I know I originally got into this thing saying it was going to be a budget build, just the bare necessities. Well, we’ve obviously gone above and beyond the bare necessities—windows and seals and fancy no-seed upholstery and fancy door panels—by no means necessity, absolute niceties, as I’ve said before.

Overall, well… total cost… we’re, goodness, 11… a 5 thousand into this project. As we go through, actually, I put together a condensed list of everything that I can think of. I don’t think I’ve missed anything. There possibly might be a thing or two here in this big list of all the items that we’ve pulled off the shelf and put onto this car. It’s a pretty extensive list, totaling $15,000 basically.

If you’re going to spend that much money at once, by all means go ahead and take advantage of one of our larger sales. Like right now, it’s Cyber Monday, Black Friday—you know, it’s that time of year—so we’re running a large sale right now, our biggest sale of the year. This is the largest discount that we ever offer at any one time, so you guys can take advantage of that 20% off sale. Check your emails, make sure that you’re signed up for our email list so you can take advantage of these, especially early sales. I think this sale started via email notification only a couple days ago. You guys can get 20% off during our Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale. Otherwise, you can always go through and get 15% off every day. I mean, it doesn’t matter what day of the year it is—if you’re spending over $1600, you can get on our everyday savings.

I also put a build list together—or rather, I chopped down our build list into a much more, you know, bare necessities list. This car had to have tires. In my personal preference, it had to have drop spindles and disc brakes. And then, of course, I wanted it to be mechanically and electrically sound, so everything from the wiring harness all the way down to our switches, firewall seal, rear engine seal, you know, fan shroud hoses, just to make certain the engine isn’t blowing air all over the engine compartment. And we’re still almost $4,000 in bare necessities—or again, this is my bare necessities.

We could have left our old floor pans in place. We could have just dealt with the one seat that we had in the car. You only need one seat to drive a car, and we had one. So even then, we’re still almost $4,000. But you can still take advantage of our savings, whether it be our everyday or the Black Friday savings, for an even further, you know, condensed-down list. Say your car has good wheels and tires on it already and you don’t want to go to drop spindles and disc brakes—you just want to rebuild your existing drum brakes—this is kind of a breakdown going through and just getting a car that would be in similar condition to this back up and on the road. And we’re still looking at about $2,000 for just the mechanical and the electrical items that, again, in my opinion, are necessities.

I did take off, you know, the BlazeCut fire extinguisher system, so this is a very, very condensed list, and we’re only looking at about $2,000 for this. And again, with our savings, that can be chopped down even more. I hope that gives you a realistic idea of how much it costs to, you know, not necessarily restore a car—although at this point this car is, other than paint and body, and a headliner and carpeting, almost completely restored.

Carpeting and headliner, cost-wise, you’re looking at maybe about another $400 to $500 depending on the colors and materials you go with. But other than that, that is all the parts needed to get a car in similar condition restored, and we’ve restored this car, other than paint and body, for about $12,000.

Now granted, there are other costs involved—having tires and wheels mounted, having an alignment done. I did pick up some parts from other automotive places. The fuel pressure regulator and gauge, I did happen to have an old vacuum advance distributor that I put in the car, but that’s not necessarily unlike you guys at home. A lot of you guys are already at home collecting parts for Volkswagens. You’ve already put together a collection of probably a lot of spare parts.

Again, this still gives you a good idea of the overall costs, and these are all retail prices, at least as of today. And we went overboard on some products, and maybe we didn’t go top-of-the-line with our Mexican running boards and our Brazilian door seals, but we’ve got a good spread there.

That being said, again, we’ve got more plans for this car. The bosses have an idea, I have an idea—we’ll see what comes to fruition. They want to sell it. I want to keep it. I really like this car. Surprisingly enough, my wife really likes this car. She wasn’t a fan of my Super Beetle in our last build. She didn’t like the modern styling; she doesn’t like Super Beetles, and it’s understandable—a lot of people don’t. My wife prefers the more vintage classic cars, and the fact that this car has a sunroof especially, she really liked.

So time will tell what happens and what path we take with this car. Usually the boss wins—and that’s my boss that pays me, not my boss my wife—so we’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, guys, I really, really enjoyed making these videos for you, but we’ll see where it goes from here. Whatever you guys are doing this time of year, enjoy it, and life’s full of good people. If you can’t find one, be one. Later, guys.