美国国家公共电台 NPR Restoring VW Beetles, Buses ... And Dreams

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

In the town of Williamsport, Md., there's a small body shop that's built a big reputation restoring old Volkswagens. And as NPR's John Ydstie reports, it's also preserving some fond memories.

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JOHN YDSTIE, BYLINE 1: Bob Cook owns this shop called Cooker's Restorations. He says he started paying attention to cars when he was 10 years old. And when he was 14, he talked his older brother into buying a car.

BOB COOK: He wanted to get a rabbit. I'm like, why would you want to get a rabbit? So I talked him into a Beetle 2. He bought the beetle. Literally 3, the day he brought it home, I started wrenching 4 on it. I was 14. I couldn't drive a car, but I wanted to work on a car.

YDSTIE: When he was 16, Bob bought a Beetle of his own.

COOK: You know, I wrenched 5 on the rades (ph), the engine - everything about it - put interior in it. And then it really started snowballing.

YDSTIE: By the time Bob was 19, he was doing full restorations. His day job was building houses, but he'd come home and work into the night on old VWs. When the housing market busted 6 in 2009, he bought this little shop just outside Williamsport and started restoring Volkswagens full time. Word of the shop's artistry spread, and now he has a two-year-long list of vintage VW owners waiting for him and his small crew to work their magic. That magic is on display today at Cooker's annual open house. In front of the shop, satisfied clients and VW fans mingle 7 and admire perfectly 8 restored cars. One gem 9 is a midnight-blue 1964 Beetle owned by Georgine Casper. She's from Edison, N.J. And her love of VWs goes back to her teenage years in the late 1970s.

GEORGINE CASPER: I actually had auto 10 mechanics in high school.

YDSTIE: She took it for two years and thought she'd be an auto mechanic. Her boyfriend, Mike - now her husband - had a VW Bug 11 back then.

CASPER: I always had my Volkswagens. His brother had one. He had a '65 that - you know, in the winter, when it didn't start, I'd be the one out pushing it. I said, I want a Volkswagen. My mother said, you don't need a Volkswagen. I said, I want a Volkswagen.

YDSTIE: So for $600, she bought this car and another one, a 1969 beetle.

CASPER: The '69 - the floor was so rotted, you could almost put your feet out the bottom. And I brought them home. And she was - she looked at the two of them. And she's like, oh, my God, what did you do? You spend your money on these junks? This is not "Sanford And Son" junkyard. She was yelling. And, every day, she'd come home, and she's like, look at this junk. I'm like, it's not junk because, to me, it wasn't. It was a diamond in the rough.

YDSTIE: Ultimately Georgine who became an office manager, not a mechanic, couldn't do the restoration herself. So she asked Bob and his crew to make her dreams for her car come true. And now Georgine's '64 Beetle shines like a diamond with four chrome wheels as the setting. To make this happen, Bob and his crew take the cars apart and restore them piece by piece either to their original condition or to a modified version. Georgine's is an understated hot rod with a high-powered engine and a roll cage. The other specialty 12 of Cooker's is restoring VW buses like Alvin Zeminsky's. He brought his to the open house from Cherrytown, Pa.

ALVIN ZEMINKSY: I found it in a barn near Frederick, Md., in '95, paid $100 for it.

YDSTIE: Zeminsky says he didn't get around to restoring it because he was busy raising a family.

ZEMINSKY: And then I met Bob and brought it here and had him give it the royal treatment.

YDSTIE: Yeah, no kidding. Describe what it is.

ZEMINSKY: It's a 1964 21-window deluxe 13 bus. It was the most expensive bus they made. It was, like, $2,600 new in '64. It's kind of turned around big time now.

YDSTIE: So you bought it for a hundred bucks 14. And what's it worth now?

ZEMINSKY: Probably nearing 150,000.

YDSTIE: Wow. In just the past few years, the market for vintage VW buses has skyrocketed. Rusted 15-out buses that people used to pay to have hauled away now sell for $20,000-plus. So what's the big deal? Why are they in such demand? Partly, it's just their great design and simplicity 16. And, partly, it's the stories that go with them, says Zeminksy.

ZEMINSKY: You can't go anywhere without getting stopped and talked to. If you're on the road, people almost crashing into you trying to take pictures. And I got scared because people were, like, driving with one hand and snapping pictures while they were beside me.

YDSTIE: David Abruzzi has a story too. It's attached to his 1960 VW single cab. It's part VW bus and part pickup 17 truck.

DAVID ABRUZZI: It's been in the family since about 1965.

YDSTIE: Abruzzi drove it here from Paw Paw, W.V. The pickup belonged to his grandfather, who used it on his farm in North Dakota in the 1960s.

ABRUZZI: So he died in 1974. It was pulled into a barn, and it sat there until 1987.

YDSTIE: Wow.

ABRUZZI: And I went up and, with the help of a great uncle, got it running and drove it all the way back to New Mexico.

YDSTIE: It sat for 27 years in the New Mexico sun until Abruzzi brought it to West Virginia, where he lives now.

ABRUZZI: People were stopping by my house and saying, if you're going to restore it, you got to take it to Cooker's. And so that's how it wound up here.

YDSTIE: Did you ever see your grandfather using it.

ABRUZZI: I did. Probably one of the most vivid memories was - I probably was about 5 years old. And he was working on a granary, and it was full of sod. And I thought it would be fun to get up in the bed and throw pieces of sod on his back. And I got the first one. He says, if you do that again, you're going to get a whooping 18. And, you know, being a 5-year-old - it's your grandpa - what do you do? You do it again. I do not remember the spanking 19. But I remember my grandma making him apologize to me because it's not the thing a grandpa ever does.

YDSTIE: Cooker's repaired the rusted spots on the old pickup, matching the original faded blue paint that covers 80 percent of the vehicle. It's more valuable with the original paint on it. But for Abruzzi, the truck's monetary 20 value isn't the point. What's priceless for him is his grandfather's name and address still stenciled 21 on the doors - W.E. Skalisky (ph), Battleview, N.D. John Ydstie, NPR News.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: To see photos of the restored VWs, go to npr.org.