The 1966 VW Beetle Forum

phononocd · Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2010 10:33 pm Post subject: Early model 66

According to the date on the inside of the car (and the vin) my car was made sep 13, 1965. Are there any differences between early and late model 66's ? My car also has the Sapphire 1 radio that was available in 65, not 66. I'm just curious, I got a little excited when I learned mine was made so much before 1966!

fatalifeaten · Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2010 11:05 pm Post subject:

VW model years go August to July, so yes, September of '65 is a '66 model car. One thing you might notice is your door handles. '66 they went from square buttons on the outer door to round. I've heard this was a mid-model year change, but I've never been able to verify. My '66 is a May car and it's got round button handles. Generically speaking, VW was fond of using up the last bits of everything. A classic example of this is the Zwitter. These were produced as VW went from Split window to Oval production and they either had a shortage of oval parts or wanted to clean out all the split rear clips so you had approximately 6 months of the '53 model year where the car was an oval window car but had a split rear window (I think the official production figure was something on the likes of 31,000). This used to happen all the time in Wolfsburg.

Now, your Sapphire 1 is a little bit different. Radios were customarily a dealer installed option. That meant if the dealer had some left over from last year, you got those installed first. Since your car is an early-in-the-year production run, it's even more logical to see that you got a '65 radio installed. The dealer was probably blowing them out and the Original purchaser got a "deal" on the sapphire 1. Random aside here, Ever wonder why radio antennas on our cars seem to never be consistent, even in the same model year for earlier model (pre '67) cars? Exact same reason. Dealers were allowed latitude to install them as they saw fit and so you'd get antennas popping up on either side of the car, singe or dual post antennas, etc. It all depended on the dealer's inventory and their preference.

pira114 · Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2010 11:50 pm Post subject:

Wow. I did not know that about the antennas. Explains the location of mine. Good post.

phononocd · Posted: Thu Jul 29, 2010 7:57 am Post subject:

Thank you for all of that information. In a way you answered another one of my small questions, I have 2 different door handles. One is the square button the other is round! The guy at the local VW shop said that the Round button handle was a 67 only part and it shouldn't fit. I'm not to picky on things like that, makes the car more "unique"!