My first car was a 1970 Volkswagen Beetle.  As far as first cars go, it was a pretty good one.  This morning, I was looking back through some old pictures, and it got me thinking back to that old car of mine.  And that reminded me of  something that I wanted to do with that old bug, but never got the chance.  I wanted to turn it into a Beetleboard.

If you were around in the 70’s and 80’s you might remember them.  Companies would pay Volkswagen drivers to paint their cars with advertising logos.  I’m told that they were most popular in California, but by the late 70’s there were a few around my home in Virginia Breach, VA.

In the summer of 1979 right before I headed out to college (I believe that was the year) I actually attended a meeting to see about turning my VW into a Beetleboard.  Sadly, the only opportunities that they had at the time was to advertise Kool cigarettes, and since I was a minor and didn’t smoke cigarettes, that wasn’t an option.

Today, seeing vehicles covered with advertising isn’t much of an oddity.  Thanks to technology and the advent of vehicle wrapping you can see mobile billboard in nearly every city.

I did a quick Google search to see if I could find anything about the old Beetleboards, and sadly there wasn’t much info about them anywhere on the web.  I did see a couple of forum posts mentioning a company called Beetleboards of America that painted VW’s back in the 70’s and even found a  couple of foreign blogs that focused on Volkswagen’s.  Both of the foreign blogs had an old print ad for Ultra Brite toothpaste that was promoting a VW giveaway.  The featured Beetle was painted up in Beetleboard style.

The only other Beetleboard image I could find on the net, looked to be taken from some 1970’s magazine.  And from looking  at the picture, it was probably came from a story talking about the guy (below) who invented Beetleboards.  That’s just my guess, but any info that you might come up with would be appreciated.

No matter what, the old black an white picture of  the Levi’s For The Feet and Kool Cigarettes Beetleboards are pretty cool!  The Kool Beetleboard might even be what my old VW would have looked like if I had been interested in promoting cigarettes.  Make sure to click on all of the pictures to see the full size images.

Ah, the good old days!