A Loveable Bug

Owner of pristine vintage Volkswagen is four years younger than his car

Photo by Matt Rose

“I always wanted to own a Volkswagen,” says Phillips as he pats the car, parked outside Body Synergy in Flat Rock, the fitness spa he owns with his wife Amber. “I originally got it just to commute back and forth to work from our house, which is only four miles away. But it’s so much fun to drive I started taking it all over. It’ll do 80 miles an hour on I-26. And it gets about 36 miles to a gallon of regular gas, so I can drive it around for a week for 20 dollars.”

Mike’s obsession with VWs stems from an uncle back in his native New Jersey, who’d served as an Army mechanic in Germany after World War II and had developed an intimate working relationship with the Volkswagens the military used for daily transport. His admiration for the cars’ ingeniously designed innards returned with him to the States — and to Mike.

“I almost bought one when I was a professional snowboarder back in the ’90s,” says Phillips. However, constant driving to snowy places for competition meant he needed a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Then, 13 years ago, he moved to Hendersonville because of family connections. Now 37 — “the Bug is four years older than me” — he created Body Synergy with Amber in 2004; their facility provides Pilates training, holistic skin care, massage therapy and chiropractic treatments. The bright-red Bug can be seen parked most days at the Singleton Center, where Body Synergy moved in early 2011 from its original location on Upward Road.

Phillips’ Beetle is one of some 21 million of them produced between 1938 and 2003, when Volkswagen terminated the line in favor of larger and sportier models such as the Passat. Officially known as the Volkswagen Type 1, the Beetle still holds the record as the world’s longest-running automobile line based on a single design platform. Phillips thinks he is the third or fourth owner of his Bug, and produces from the tiny glovebox the original bill of sale and maintenance records beginning in June 1970. That means the car first rolled off the assembly line in Wolfsburg, Germany, in the late winter or early spring of that year.

“It’s amazingly simple to maintain,” says Phillips, lifting the rear bonnet to admire the famous rear-mounted, 4-cylinder engine. “The whole engine lifts out in one piece after you loosen four bolts. It’s got the same basic components as a Porsche 911 engine because the engine was designed by Ferdinand Porsche. Porsche owners get really peeved when I tell them that.”

He points out a small platform that could accommodate an air-conditioning unit (designed especially for Beetles by an American inventor in 1967). “But I’ve never been uncomfortably hot driving around in it during the summer,” he insists. “The vent windows are designed so that when you open them straight out, the air flow really cools down the inside.” Phillips says he is looking forward to his first winter with the Bug to see if it’s true about the car’s rear traction and stability in deep snow. “People tell me that if you need to get up a snow-covered hill, just go up in reverse.”

In 1933, Ferdinand Porsche designed a simple flat-4, air-cooled engine derived from earlier Porsche models. By 1938, Porsche and his design team had produced an efficient, simple-to-maintain car whose flat-sided metal body was attached to an elementary chassis by just 18 bolts. “They even designed a windshield washer that didn’t need an electric pump,” reveals Phillips, lifting the front bonnet to reveal a spare tire with attached tubing. “They overinflated the spare tire on purpose so that the air pressure drives the washer.” The wipers, likewise, are operated manually by a knob on the dashboard. Although there were incremental changes over the years, Porsche’s basic design remained the same until the last Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the line at an assembly plant in Mexico in July 2003.

“I’ve had no trouble finding people to work on the car,” says Phillips. “They just love how it’s so simple.” But other than four new tires and a couple of replacement hoses, the Beetle’s required little updating, having been lovingly maintained by its successive owners, and now, in Mike’s equally solicitous care. Admirers seem drawn to the car as a reminder of earlier, and simpler, times.

“I love to drive it down Main Street in the evening, when people are at sidewalk tables having dinner or strolling,” says Phillips. “Everyone points and waves and smiles.” Or punches. Some 40 years after the game first started, kids and adults alike still call out “Punch Buggy!” when they see a Beetle go by, playfully popping whoever’s next to them.

“It happens every day.”