I am new to this forum so bare with me!

I purchased a beetle this weekend with a sliding sunroof.
The title states that is a 65 but I was under the impession that the last year for ragtop was 63.
Am I mistaken or do I have the wrong vin on the title?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Hello, The last year for Rag Top (some people named it sliding roof) is August '63, after that we've got Metal Sliding Roof or Metal Sunroof, I've just finished restoring my '66 vintage metal sun roof. Very time consuming, but I'm glad w/ the result. How about you ? do you want to restoring it to Vintage or what ??? Regards

The sliding sunroof is used by VW for standard beetles till aug 1967!!!


Regards,


Guido

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Hi,

I'm also in the USA, you are correct, the last year for the fabric sliding sunroof was 1963.
You may very well have a 65 with a fabric roof for it is not uncommon to graft in the sunroof cut from a pre-64 VW (1963 and earlier to 1956).
Many of the installations were done very nicely and it is still a very common thing to do.
Post your chassis # and we can verify the year of the car. There are two spots to look for your number.

First under the back seat on the hump, this is the main location and the number most often used to register your car.

Secondly behind the spare tire is a metal plate with the number stamped into it.
Both of these numbers SHOULD be the same. They often are not because of rust issues, and other reasons unknown to us, bodies are often switched to different pans (chassis) so you end up with two different year components making up one whole VW bug.

You may have very well have a pre 64 body on a 65 chassis and it is registered as a 65.

Post both numbers either here or on Samba or both, we'll figure out what is going on.

Enjoy your bug! This is a great hobby and still amazingly affordable.
You will find that your bug has probably been "modified" in many ways during the past 40 + years. It is to be expected and is usually fine.

Any questions, feel free to ask.

dave

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Very true, but not for USA versions.
Same with Semapores, they ended here years before they ended in Europe.
There are actually 66 and 67 bugs running around with link pin front ends from the factory!! (of course manufactured in national regional assembly points as kit cars). Many of the non German assembly points required local product content hence things like glass, electrics and upholstery (among other items) are different from the official German product.
Sadly records from many of these assembly points are poor or non existent.

dave

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