24-05-2025
- Automotive
- South China Morning Post
With more oomph than a BMW M3 sports coupe, restored VW Beetles fly down German autobahns
There are sheets of rusty metal all over the place along with deflated tyres, torn upholstery, battered panels and seized-up engines. A walk through Georg Memminger's used VW warehouse in southern Germany is sobering.
That is until you reach his showroom. It contains gleaming examples of the car that made Volkswagen famous, with a level of finish never achieved when the model was still in production in Germany and later at foreign plants.
Open-top and closed versions of the Beetle which pass through his workshop get a second lease of life after being lovingly rebuilt on four floors of an industrial building north of Munich on the outskirts of the town of Reichertshofen.
Turning a rust bucket into an eye-catcher takes nine months of work for the firm's 10 employees and a cabriolet version can cost from €171,000 (US$193,000) to buy.
Georg Memminger restores VW Beetles in southern Germany. Photo: Memminger
Memminger's restored VW Beetles far outshine the originals. Photo: Instagram/feine_cabrios
Hardly anyone in the world restores Beetles as thoroughly as Georg Memminger, who has been doing this for a quarter of a century. The cars end up looking much the same on the outside, but when the team is finished little of the original remains.
