VW Beetle Gold Portfolio 1968-1991 [Paperback]

R.M. Clarke (Compiler)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 20, 1993

Continuing the story of the Beetle, this book contains 47 articles cove ring road and competition tests, tech. data, buying used, updates, owners survey, touring. Models 1300, 1500, 1600, Super, Convertible. '

Product Details

• Paperback: 172 pages
• Publisher: Brooklands Books Ltd. (June 20, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1855201933
• ISBN-13: 978-1855201934
• Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 7.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,395,236 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book for collectors and enthusiasts, March 30, 2010

By 

Marco Lazarini "Tulio Lazarini" (Brasilia, DF Brazil) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: VW Beetle Gold Portfolio 1968-1991 (Paperback)

This book contains a huge set of articles and material collected from many car magazines about Beetle, from 1968 to 1991. The style used to create page layouts remembers old magazines from early 70's, like you have cutted the original magazines and pasted it into the book - and it helps to create a "vintage air" to the readers. The index says from what magazine every material was collected, in a cronological order.

For me, a brazilian VW Beetle enthusiast, this book was an amazing surprise: first, i got the opportunity to get material from foreign magazines to compare them with the material produced by brazilian magazine "Quatro Rodas" (means "Four Wheels" in English) about our many generations of Beetle (1200, 1300, 1300L, 1500 and 1600, from 1960 to 1996). Second, this book add a new perspective for my Beetle research, because brings me a new vision for the "global" VW Beetle, not only the versions produced in Brazil (i.e.: we didn'h have a 1303 Super Beetle version made in Brazil; the McPherson suspension, electronic fuel injection, automactic gear, safety bumpers and other improvements never came to Brazil).

If you want to have a collection of good material about the "modern" Beetle from many magazines in a single book, buy it!

2.0 out of 5 stars Vintage negativity for a vintage icon, February 15, 2012

By 

Bruce Brodnax "L.A. Biker" (Lost Angeles, somewhere out in the smog) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: VW Beetle Gold Portfolio 1968-1991 (Paperback)

First off, prepare yourself: the articles in this compilation are all road tests by established general-interest automotive magazines "back in the day" - they are NOT culled from specialist magazines devoted to the legendary VW [Hot VW, etc.] and are generally critical of the stock vehicle as delivered from the factory. They are an interesting snapshot of how the automobile industry of the time [late 60's & 70's], as a whole, viewed the venerable VW Bug (which had already been in production for over 15 years virtually unchanged before the first of these articles was written) with only minor changes and were undergoing rapid improvements by Volkswagen in order to prolong the vehicles' viability as the factory looked for alternative designs to pursue for the future [Golf, Rabbit, etc.]

So, the articles found herein are of no use whatsoever to anyone looking for tips on maintenance or modification of their vintage car; look elsewhere for that! It's best use is, as the other reviewer said, for checking the progression of model features available in your country vs. the rest of the world for the same time period. I found it most interesting to note that VW Beetles were still being shipped to the USA with front drums *long* after they'd been upgraded to disc brakes for the European & other foreign markets. [It is most interesting to compare the reviews by So. African & Australian magazines vs. their US & English counterparts: in parts of the world where you were more likely to encounter gaps in the pavement, the sacrifice of luxury for reliability seems to have been more accepted... ;) ]

One thing to bear in mind about this book [as for all the titles I've encountered in the "Gold Portfolio" series, regardless of brand or vehicle type] is that they were clearly originally composited by cutting out the magazine articles & pasting them on backing, with odd little bits of tag ends clustered at the end of the book [just as the original magazines tucked tags ends of the articles in the back pages of the rag in order to get you to flip thru more of the pages for which the advertisers had paid.] This leads to an unwelcome amalgam of type styles & interrupted reading: the best thing the publisher could do to revitalize sales of these titles would be to scan & reset the original content in cohesive type and continuous blocks, and of course, combine ALL the air-cooled models into one tome, instead of forcing you to [over]pay for the individual titles piecemeal. That's basically the reason for my 2-star review: for the price you should be getting a LOT more content, whether textual or illustrative, but what is delivered is invariably of low-resolution [B&W newsprint grade photos] and [mechanically-speaking,] cursory.

I don't recommend this title for enthusiasts: unless you are *specifically* looking for period road-tests, you can do far better with other, more in-depth titles if you're interested in this or any other vehicle covered in the "Gold Portfolio" series.