Rapturee
Member
Surprisingly, our little Beetle is the most comfortable vehicle for my 6'6" 230lb frame to drive. I have driven it for 32 hours straight and was not as sore and stiff as i have been in some of my other cars for only an hours drive! Gotta love them VW seats, man they are comfortable! We bought our little Beetle as a marital compromise. I wanted a TDI and my wife had always wanted to own a Beetle...so there you go and we both love it. I like the MPG and my wife thinks it is cute to drive. 755 miles is our best tank, netting us about 51+mpg. I was headed to Portland Ore a few years ago to see the traveling ELIO car. I had a CVT rooftop tent and was going to use it for the trip. I put the factory Beetle roof racks on and installed the CVT. WOW, it was huge up there and really dwarfed the little beetle. I checked the mileage and HOLY SMOKES Batman, it dropped to an astounding 35mpg on the freeway at 65mph. Well, not being able to live with that, i put the old thinking cap on and drew up a rear deck to mount it down out of the airstream, I used the lower half of a two place bike rack and mounted the new 1" and 3/4" box tube steel rack to it. Then I fabbed two stationary tabs and mounted them to the rear of the Beetle. Then bolted the tabs to the front of the off of the the new rack. I remounted the CVT to the new hitch rack, now allowing the CVT to be firmly secured to the Beetle and down out of the airflow. I finished it just in time to leave for Portland so i was not able to test its function before i left. I made it to Portland for the showing of the ELIO Motors tour and had a blast checking the little Elio out. What a great trip. I used the AC nearly the entire way. I had the CC on and set at 65mph and to my complete surprise the mileage jumped right back up to 49.1MPG! It was a little weird having several people in Portland slowing down next to me, pointing, smiling and taking lots of pictures. So here are a couple of pictures of the little Beetle with the rack, with the closed CVT and with it fully open and ready to sleep in!! Gotta love Beautiful Lake Oswego Oregon.
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