{"id":1476,"date":"2021-11-23T19:57:16","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T03:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pauldearing.com\/?p=1476"},"modified":"2023-11-24T07:47:42","modified_gmt":"2023-11-24T15:47:42","slug":"flaming-beetle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/?p=1476","title":{"rendered":"Flaming Beetle"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we moved to Sweden, we put all of our furniture and belongings in storage and sold all the big stuff including the cars.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to our return to the US.\u00a0 Carrie had long ago decided that she was going to buy the Volkswagen New Beetle, which was on its second or third model year, on our return.\u00a0 Having never seen one in person, I was convinced I was going to buy a PT Cruiser.<\/p>\n

We arrived back home in Redondo Beach.\u00a0 Carrie bought her New Beetle.\u00a0 I looked at the PT Cruiser and\u00a0 being grandly disappointed, went shopping for something else.\u00a0 I went shopping in Carrie’s New Beetle.\u00a0 The more I drove it, the more I liked it.\u00a0 Turbocharged, quick, handled well and way more comfortable than the 1961 Bug I had owned decades before.<\/p>\n

I called Carrie and asked if she would mind if I bought a New Beetle like hers.\u00a0 She said it would be okay if we had his-and-hers cars and jokingly added that I’d need to paint flames on mine so we could tell them apart.<\/p>\n

I bought my own New Beetle.<\/p>\n

Larry Fator is a famous artist known for his airbrush art on cars and motorcycles.\u00a0 His work is featured in many car enthusiast magazines.\u00a0 You can see some of his work at http:\/\/www.quicksilverart.com<\/a>.\u00a0 One of his specialties is flames.\u00a0\u00a0 I made an appointment.<\/p>\n

After explaining to Larry what kind of flames I liked, he took a roll of pinstriping tape and outlined where he would paint the flames across the front fenders.\u00a0 After looking at samples of colors he suggested for the old-school look I was going for, we agreed on the design.\u00a0 I could not have been happier with the outcome.<\/p>\n

Carrie was shocked that I would have flames painted on a new car, but accepted that it was actually her idea. And she was as impressed as I was with how professionally they were rendered.<\/p>\n

In addition to the flames, we could tell our New Beetles apart in two other ways.\u00a0 Mine was a stick while Carrie’s was an automatic.\u00a0 Carrie’s was silver metallic grey.\u00a0 Mine was black.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carrie Lynn said it would be okay if we had his-and-hers cars and jokingly added that I’d need to paint flames on mine so we could tell them apart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[254,253,255],"class_list":["post-1476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-old-stories","tag-custom-flames","tag-new-beetle","tag-volkswagen-beetle"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1476"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1701,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions\/1701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pauldearing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}