Four days of driving nothing but a Volkswagen Brasilia changed me. I’d never piloted a VW for that long much less an incredibly well-cared-for classic air-cooled one. I went into this experience expecting to kind of hate driving a car that is absolutely not meant for people who are 6’6”.
Instead, I found a newfound appreciation for simple engineering. Underpinning the body of this three-door hatchback is the chassis of the Karmann Ghia. VW then leveraged its 1.6-liter air-cooled inline four-cylinder for power and set it about as far back as it possibly could. [Editor’s Note: to be fair, VW didn’t leverage anything or set anything anywhere: the engine was just where the Ghia/Beetle/Type 1 always had their engines! – JT]
That layout isn’t the best for driving but it’s amazing for packaging. I’m getting ahead of myself though. Before we dive into exactly how I feel about the Brasilia, let me tell you about the end of the Overcrest Rally, the whole reason I was driving a Brasilia in the first place.
If you missed parts one and two, feel free to roll back and check them out first. For those of you keeping track of the journey, you’ll know that after day one, things were peachy. The vibes were high, the car ran well, and the people and views were excellent. The final day of the rally saw us kick things off in Harrison, Arkansas, about 40 minutes south of Branson, Missouri.
The group of rally-goers convened at a mostly abandoned lot formerly home to a business in Dogpatch, Arkansas, called The Neutral Zone. It’s where the Overcrest Productions team provided some additional guidance about the day, encouraged safe and responsible driving, and where I shot the video you see below.
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From there, my driving partner, Jeremy Malcolm from Hagerty, and I hit the road. We had one major goal; beat everybody to the coffee stop since Hagerty was sponsoring that particular stop. Some of you might remember the utter fiasco that the attempted coffee stop was on day one.
When that fizzled out, Jeremy called the great folks at Peggy Sue’s Coffee in Jasper, Arkansas and they set up a new coffee stop for day two of the rally without any hesitation. Not only was Peggy Sue’s Coffee inviting, but they were fast. The whole rally crew, some 200 people, made it in and out in less than two hours.
As we were leaving the location we buckled up in the Brasilia and an elderly gentleman named Anthony walked up and surprised us. “I had three of those when I was younger,” he said. Surely, he couldn’t mean Brasilias, could he? Was he confusing this for a Rabbit ot something? Nope! He was from Rio de Janeiro and seeing this pristine example reminded him of his teenage years.
“I taught my boys how to drive stick shift in one of these… I also had the big van, the kombi” he said. During day one of this rally it was apparent that everyone who saw the Brasilia liked it. Who would’ve thought that we’d meet anyone who actually owned one though? Not I.
We weren’t the only ones having this sort of experience either. Chris, one of the leaders at Overcrest randomly met an elderly man named Mike while on the rally. It turns out that Mike used to race Porsche RSRs. One of Chris’ partners at Overcrest, Jake, has an RSR so Chris introduced Mike to Jake. What happened next was a bit of rally magic.
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Jake offered to give Mike, a long-since retired racing driver, the chance to ride once again in an RSR. The two went for a drive and about halfway through, Jake offered Mike the chance to drive the car himself. Without hesitation, the gray-haired man said in a crisp clear voice “Yeah, absolutely.”
When they returned, Mike seemed to be reliving some important moments in his life. As Jake tells it on the Overcrest Podcast, “My favorite part of all this experience is that he gets in [to the destination], he stops, and he turns the key off and it’s just silent. And he takes a deep breath, a big sigh. And he starts tearing up right then and there.” Those types of connections are what make this event so special. To that end, we kept rolling. For more on Mike, have a gander at the Overcrest Podcast below:
From Jasper, we piloted the little VW up to a scenic outlook nearby. At a little over 2,000 feet above sea level, Highway 7 is one of the higher roads in Arkansas. What you see below are miles and miles of the Boston Mountains stretching toward the horizon. It was on roads like these that the Brasilia felt happiest.
Anthony likely did his kids a service by using one of these as a teaching tool. The gearbox and clutch are about as forgiving as they could possibly be. While it’s possible to stall the car, it takes almost complete disregard for the throttle and maybe even a bit of an uphill position to do it.
Overcrest is a unique rally in that it offers a tarmac track and a gravel path every day. Seeing as we’d kept the tires on pavement during the first few days we felt it only reasonable to test it out on the slippery stuff now that the journey was coming to a close. The gravel route we took offered some great photo opportunities, too.
That road led us to what turned into our lunch spot and what would ultimately be the evening dinner spot as well, Oark General Store. Since 1890, this establishment has dished out made-from-scratch burgers, fried pies, and more. It’s a mainstay of the kind of groups that love to drive these back roads in this corner of Arkansas.
Lunch was great but the real show was still a few hours from starting. Before that, we drove due south into Clarksville, Arkansas. The road between Oark and Clarksville is outstanding too. It’s as curvy as anything else we drove over the course of four days and features big elevation changes too. In fact, I’m proud to say that I managed to get the tail of the Brasilia to step out as we went around one hairpin.
That surprised both Jeremy and myself and ended up being the perfect cherry on top of my time in this little car. As I noted in part two, the Brasilia doesn’t handle bends very well and it really doesn’t like to brake going downhill. Evidently, it hates breaking down even more though because despite driving it incredibly hard, it never ever blinked for four days.
It started better when cold than it did warm, the engine ran without missing a beat, and while it didn’t have heating or air conditioning, the vents and corner windows made for a largely comfortable experience. Now, a week or so after the Brasilia left my life I don’t completely feel its absence in my life, but I certainly appreciate the simple, reliable nature that made it and so many other air-cooled VWs so popular.
The end of the entire rally included the Overcrest Film Festival which was a total blast. The entire crew of drivers and passengers gathered back at the Oark General Store for the show. The crew positioned a huge projection screen outside the store and suddenly the event was a bit stalled. A street lamp around 50 years behind the screen was casting a shadow of foliage on the back of the screen and causing issues with picture quality.
Clever use of a rifle by a local who lived near the store fixed that problem, though. There’s no word on exactly who is picking up the tab for the street light. What I do know is that the Overcrest Rally is an event that anybody who loves car culture and taking the scenic route will love. Enjoy the entire film fest below, firearms not required.
I’ve done other rallies (I do one in WV-ish every June), but this was my first Overcrest and it was *so much fun*. I’ll absolutely do it again when it’s close enough for me to drive to – I love the west but I want to drive my own car(s) and it just takes too much time to get out there and back from Chicago. I loved the vibe, meeting new people and making new friends, the location and of course the driving. Not only had I never been to the Ozarks before, I had somehow never been to Arkansas at all – I hadn’t even driven across it in 25 years. The roads were absolutely stellar – there are great driving roads everywhere you look, you hardly have to even pick them. Kris and the other organizers did a great job planning routes, making sure everyone knew about sites of interest along the route, and leaving time to stop and explore. And it was just tremendous fun hammering on my 911 for hundreds and hundreds of miles. Rivers, I enjoyed meeting you and your wife and Jeremy (I ate dinner with you on Thursday night.)
In part 1 the engine was a flat four – but in part 3 it is listed as an inline-4. Can this possibly be corrected as for a while I wondered if they were using the NSU engine in this Brasilia.
A few years ago I watched a VW SP2 pull into a gas station here in Seattle and walked over to let the driver know that I was happy to see one. He was surprised that I knew what it was until I explained that I had an interest in unusual vehicles and pointed out that at the other set of pumps I had just finished gassing up an Austin Allegro…
If there was a geek-out limit, I would end up in extremely illegal territory seeing a SP2 gassing up in these parts. I did get to have pretty-much the same experience a while back though – just swap those two vehicles out with a Pinzgauer (vehicle of interest) and an ’82 Jaguar XJ6 (mine), and change the location to Iowa.
Good article BTW, much enjoyed! Pretty cool how the Brasilia brought back great memories. Sounds like it was a lot of fun!
Shooting out a streetlight is something to be admired? Unless the streetlight shot first, that’s just stupid.
To be fair, they are in Arkansas! I’m guessing it’s a criminal act (even in AR), but there’s also a chance the guy who shot it was the local chief of police!
Looks like a civil lights issue.
I had an apartment with a street light right near my window. I think the city replaced it 4 times before they just gave up. I know nothing 🙂