I think the true essence of Rattletrap is in the story that Tony created around the car and it is that that I think John is valiantly trying to perpetuate. The trouble is that people are now so much more savvy regarding ancient VWs and there are some parts of the tale that just don’t wash, this might account for why the car ended up in an obscure Wild Fowl and Motor Museum in rural East Sussex and not in the factory museum in Wolfsburg.
The car (in it’s 60s and 70s incarnation) was clearly a ’53, the original chassis number confirms this, and in early editions of Beetling Magazine Tony referred to it as a ’53. But Tony’s mileage record related to a car that had been built in 1950. It wasn’t until the late 70s and maybe as late as the early 80s that Tony first hit upon the story of a prototype to explain that his ’53 had been manufactured in 1950, in an attempt to appease the vintage buffs who were now savvy to the progressive refinements and knew when the Zwitter production run began.
The chances of VW creating such a prototype for a run of 100 cars is pretty much zero, not least because there is absolutely no record of it, either official or anecdotal, but also that the logistics of building such a run that so closely resembled the production car of two years hence are unimaginable. :shock:
In many respects it doesn’t matter that the car was originally a ’53 because there almost certainly was a ’50 from which it inherited its mileage record and the two were not only genetically linked, but somehow fused into one by Tony’s tales.
Closer inspection isn’t really necessary as what’s left of 10 BXK now is merely spiritually representative of the original car, the question of the amount of metal dating back to 1953 is purely academic. The connecting thread in the whole Rattletrap tale isn’t the metal but Tony, and now a worthy successor in the form of John. There could be no one better suited to bear the Rattletrap baton! :beer:
John mentioned earlier that there were people wanting this thread closed and maybe deleted, he suggested this might be because of jealousy. I’m not one of those people, I think threads should be able to run their course, if I have an objection to this thread it is that it is responsible for perpetuating a number of untruths about the car which are likely to become perceived as truth if left unchallenged.
Mike 😎
July 1957 UK supplied RHD Oval. 1972 World Champion Beetle. 1978 UK supplied RHD 1303LS Cabriolet. 1973 UK supplied RHD 1303s.