The Volkswagen Beetle isn’t the first vehicle you’d think of using as a basis to build your dream off-roader…but we reckon this thing turned out just fine.
This is Jamie Wiseman’s 1967 Volkswagen Beetle. And we love it. Here at MotoFomo we love it when people turn what they’ve got into what they need…it doesn’t have to be the biggest or the most expensive to make it onto our pages. It just has to have been with passion and purpose and be used. And this thing definitely fits that bill.
Came across this vehicle via a suggested video on YouTube and then started looking into it a little more. Here’s the story. And if you want to check out what Jamie gets up to with his Beetle follow him on Instagram via @JamieWiseman. Simple.
“My wife and I purchased a 1967 Bug in August 2017 as a restoration project to flip and sell. We had a road trip to Colorado planned for June 2018 to camp and see the backcountry, and we thought it would be cool to take a Baja Bug out west on an outdoor adventure. So I started to look at kits and other off-road VW beetles, but nothing looked like what we were wanting. Then one day I was watching a video on YouTube about overlanding and it hit me! We need to build the Bug like an overland vehicle,” Jamie said.
Being a custom job, plenty of what you’re looking at was made by Jamie in his own shed. He made a roll cage, the front and rear bumper and roof rack. The engine was worked over, the bug was lifted three inches and given a four-inch wider stance, a three-inch body lift finished things off. It runs 30×9.5-inch Desert Hawk M/T tyres.
An electric power steering kit was installed along with a transaxle and gear reduction box from a VW bus which gave him the crawler first gear he wanted. The interior was then made a lot more comfortable with air conditioning and a stereo and all the gauges were redone.
All up it took Jamie just nine months to build this thing. And then he went and built a custom teardrop camper to tow behind the thing.
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