One of the more popular vehicles prior to the import craze through the 1980s and ’90s was the Volkswagen Beetle. Car clubs existed by the thousands across the country, and we saw every color in the rainbow as well as everything from a stock 40hp powerplant to a potent 2135 sporting a turbo and a sidedraft Weber carburetor. Occasionally, though, we see one that comes along it turns heads for a different reason.
One such VW is this Super Bug that our friend ScottieDTV found at the NSRA Street Rod Nationals in Louisville, Kentucky. Flipping things around, instead of a potent air-cooled mill in the back, a 502-inch BBC sits under the front bonnet where the fuel tank used to reside.
We don’t get to see inside the rear lid, but that’s likely where you’ll find the fuel cell. The interior of the Super Bug had to be modified to handle the massive 502, which meant that everything was moved back a little.
Looking at the interior, the standard front buckets were removed and a pair of racing-style bucket seats are bolted in where the factory rear seat used to reside. A custom center console was fabricated and to keep things in the 21st century, an modern tablet is mounted to the dash.
The Super Bug takes on a bit of a vintage stock car look with the wide tires protruding from the stock-sized fenders. The car also has wheelie bars underneath so perhaps it sees a little action on the strip. The 502 provides 450 horses and 550 lb-ft of torque, plenty enough to move this little machine from a static display to ballistic in a matter of seconds. We wonder if the Super Bug would have been welcome in a VW car club in the 1980s had it shown up sporting big-block Chevy power instead of the flat four?