Love those bugs

Corey Seibert pointed out a small blue die-cast car in a corner of the display case.

“This car right here, I got when I was 8 years old,” he said. “That was the first one.”

That would have been 1969, shortly after Seibert’s older brother took him to a Cedar Rapids screening of the latest Disney film, “The Love Bug.” His brother drove his own white VW Beetle to see the movie starring Dean Jones, Michele Lee, Buddy Hackett, and a white VW Beetle named Herbie.

“We came out of the theater, and everybody was all over that car,” said Siebert, 62. “That’s what got me thinking.”

It planted the seed not only for the younger Seibert’s next purchase but for a lifetime avocation collecting, rebuilding, customizing and trading the Volkswagen Beetle and its variants. One morning this week, the large shop at his home just west of Urbana hosted two complete cars, one with a chopped top, the other with significant mechanical upgrades.

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“Both California cars,” Seibert said of the cars. “They’re both rust-free.”

There’s also a stock of components such as engines, transmissions, floor pans, wheels, and body parts for future projects. A stripped-down Karmann Ghia, the Italian-styled “sport model” that was mechanically identical to the Beetle, awaited attention in the paint booth.

“I’ve had 10 or 12 (Beetles) at a time, but now you’ve got to insure them,” he said.

Seibert bought his first full-sized Beetle at 14 and estimated he’s owned well over 100 Beetles since that fateful Love Bug showing.

Two Beetles are displayed at Seibert’s Tootsie’s Ice Cream & More restaurants in Vinton and La Porte City, started after 23 years as a physical-plant engineer for U.S. Bank. Seibert also drives in the occasional parade, accompanied by his wife, Teresa, when she’s not working.

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“I don’t show them off much, because she can’t go,” he said.

The restaurants these days are managed mostly by the Seiberts’ children, Michael and Michelle.

“If it wasn’t for them running the stores, I couldn’t play with this,” he said.

Seibert’s first die-cast car is now among 9,000 items of Beetle memorabilia. It’s surrounded by hundreds more, along with dealer and movie posters, scale models, clothing, books, and mounted copies of the black-and-white VW ads that are still studied in marketing classes.

“Vacations, and hitting the little stores” is how Seibert acquired the collection. “That’s where it got out of hand.”

The original rear-engine, air-cooled Beetle was as much a part of 1960s culture as, well, the Beatles. Lacking the complication of a cooling system among other features, it became the hippies’ Model T, cheap, reliable, and simple to fix. About 5 million were sold in the United States from 1948 through 1977, when the iconic design was rendered unsaleable by stricter emissions and safety standards. More than 21 million Beetles were sold worldwide through 2003, when production ceased at VW’s Puebla, Mexico, plant.

“I bought 10 brand-new motors” when the Mexican plant closed, Seibert said. “A guy gave me a deal.”

“The Love Bug” film begat a series of sequels culminating in “Herbie: Fully Loaded” (2005), starring Lindsay Lohan, Matt Dillon, and Michael Keaton. Seibert built an exact replica of Fully Loaded’s “hero car” last year.

“Two of the guys who have the real ones coached me,” he said.

In March, Seibert took the Fully Loaded replica to a gathering of Herbies at Daytona Speedway in Florida, where in the movie Lohan and Herbie beat a field of famous racers. Seibert found himself in a niche of a niche.

“The Volkswagen Herbie guys don’t like the movie with Lindsay Lohan,” he said. “They like the Dean Jones one.”

Seibert’s drive in his creation on the famed high-banked track is captured in a YouTube video by HOT VWs Magazine.

“It was really pretty incredible,” he said. “It was a car I built myself.”

A visitor won’t find that car at Seibert’s today. Like much of his work, it was quickly bought after the event by another collector.

“When they’re in the (hobby) magazines, you’d better sell,” Seibert said.

The sale freed work space for his next project, part of an effort to narrow his collection.

“This car is fast,” he said, “but that car is going to be faster. I’m trying to get my final cars all nice.”