Rich from Wolfsburg West

Today we're gonna talk to Rich Morris from Wolfsburg West in Corona, California.

Wolfsburg West is essentially a restoration house. They don't do the work, but they produce and distribute the parts. They are regarded by many around the world to be the gold standard of restoration parts.

Find Rich at: https://www.wolfsburgwest.com/

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Transcript

Today we're gonna talk to rich Morris.  I'm gonna travel to Wolfsburg West in Corona, California, and sit with rich. 

 Wolfsburg West is essentially a restoration house. They don't do the work, but they produce and distribute the parts. they are regarded by many to be  gold standard of restoration parts, even in the world, even people from Europe.

Including Germany, we'll order parts from Wolfsburg west to restore their Volkswagens.

 My earliest memory of Wolfsburg West was reading their ads in hot VWs in the eighties, actually. Uh, they were one of the seminal.  Restoration houses or, uh, you know, parts houses in Southern California, which in my opinion is really the Mecca of the, uh, air cool Volkswagen hobby, And so, yeah, I remember being a kid reading hobby VWs and seeing their ads. And then when I started to go to shows. In, uh, Arizona and Southern California, sometimes they would be there. People would be there representing Wilberg west. And, then once I got a little older and started actually restoring cars and I was trying different parts from different houses, I definitely decided as well that Wilberg west makes the best stuff.

Rich Morris started, I believe he was either the second or third employee of Wolberg west 30, some odd years ago.

So he's been with the company since it. Infancy. he has a really good intimate, knowledge and relationship with Tony Moore. And, uh, from what I could gather has a lot of respect for Tony. So Tony was fine with me talking to rich and so, uh, and rich seemed game and he was a great interview. And so,  initially we went up into a special room where he photographs.

The new parts to add to their catalog. And so that was interesting. Uh, we saw a lot of original petrol artwork, uh, and we got an inside look at how the company has run from the ground up.

 So this is my interview with rich Morris at Wolfsburg west in Corona, California.

Rich. tell me how did you get into VWs? My neighbor friend, as a child  owned a type three at a fast back. Hey, hand me a tool. Hey, hand me a tool. Hey, want to go for a drive? 

Never looked back because Volkswagens after that.

How old were you?  

I was probably 14. My first hot BWS was in 1985.  

And your neighbors fast back. Do you remember what year? That was? What year? The car? 

Late sixties. So 67 or 68. I know there's probably a huge difference.  But yeah, mid, late sixties. Okay.

And and then you said you got your first hot VW in 85. 

That's right. So I still have definitely still in high school. I think I was probably 67. Yeah. I was a sophomore in high school. Oh, 

okay. All right. We're about the same age. We won't go into details, but  you and I are about the same age. Tell me about the first Volkswagen you owned. 

The first one was a 66 beetle  and my father wouldn't let me buy some of the other cars I looked at. They weren't running, they were driving, they weren't parts. I figured I know how to wrench on things, turn things. I can put things together. And anyway, dad maybe buy one that was running, driving. No big deal.

Right. So I find it.  Dad here in the car would drive in at home. He says, Hey, is there anything else I should know about this car? The guy goes, oh yeah, by the way, it's positive.  I had no idea what that meant until you're a kid, you get it home and you put a stereo in there and I'm driving up to pick my girlfriend up at the time, up the hill and all the lights go down.

My car stops. It fills up a smoke. Oh yeah, dude. So I pull over and rip, open the hood real quick and just yank out the wires to stop the fire from happening. Got the cargo and picked her up. We had a red date.  

Didn't even stop 

the date. No, no. It was never still a memorable date. She played guitar and we went up to the skyline and she serenaded me that night.

Awesome.    

 So tell me about when you first started working at Wolfsburg West.

Well, I was working at Snap-on tools as a matter of fact, and I was a customer of Tony and wall Wolfsburg west. It was just Tony and mark. And I would go in and say, hi, they, they were my friends. I would call them. They knew who I was. I called in sick to Hughes aircraft, or I've got a flat tire, but I'd stay in, I'd eat lunch.

And, and that was the first ride mark got in a bus with safari windows that day. But so I was a customer and I called one day and I needed some help. And I said, well, thank you. And I was getting ready to hang up. And Tony says, well, wait, do you have a job? And I said, well, yeah, I've got a job. And he sounded kind of sad.

He said, well, how much do you make? And I said, five bucks an hour. He was want to.  I said, I'll see you in two weeks.  And I checked out a snap on tools. And that was that. So that would have been April of 89 that he hired me. Oh, well, the second employee. 

Oh really? And so you say mark, mark, who? Mark Depew.

He was the first employee. He was kind of like me and the fact that he was a high school kid. He'd come to the Wolfsburg every day. He'd want this, that and the other. And it was just Tony around in the shop. So finally Tony was like, look, dude, do you want a job? I could use some help. And so mark started after school and he's been here ever since.

What location was that? Cause you know, I've been a Wellsburg west customer for  man a long time, a pro I want to say at least 20 years. And so I'm, I've I've I remember two other locations. So where was your guys's location at that point? It was 

on Cyprus. It would have been the first unit, I believe that was a thousand square feet and you'd open the door and you'd literally walk into Tony's office.

And that was where it stopped. There was a couple of shelves with some parts of.  And that was what you got. And 

then from there you moved over, like off the 91 in like college or Kramer Lambert 

road also in LA Habra oh. And then from there we had another, a unit and then we had another unit. So now we had three units, everything spread out.

So that's when we moved to Anaheim and kind of consolidated all of that. We're never going to outgrow this place. Well, yeah. 

Yeah.  And so then what year did you move into this location? So before you answer, I'll tell our listeners that now we're in a big tilt up and, and I'm looking out the window from the second story here, and I can see the 91 freeway.

It happens to be moving at the moment, which is unusual. Yeah. But so it's a, it's a giant concrete tilt up a warehouse. And so when did you guys come here? 

That was 2003. So we had the Wolfsburg west Fest. That was our first open house. We had cars inside and that was a great car show, but 2003 would have been when we moved here.

So tell me about how Wolfsburg west  has grown and changed since you started.  

We have more employees and I can count. That's the first thing that comes to mind? Grown. Well, certainly we manufacturer a ton more parts carry a lot more. When we started like great out was, oh, you've got a 68.

We only go to 67. So I never bothered to learn any of that. And of course that's probably the majority of our business now is 68 and later we used brown boxes. We use white boxes. Now that say Wellsburg west, I had, my first job was Tony's kind of, what are we going to have you, do you thought here right in here?

And my job was to stamp every ups page with carbon paper and write down every manifest number and everything.  So we had dos computers. Wow. Yeah. 

Wow.  You guys manufacture more stuff now? I believe the first thing and correct me if I'm wrong. My understanding is the.  Part that Wolfsberg west reproduced was the Chrome hubcap, polar bingo.

That's exactly right. We got help from Burton Burton, Casa Blanca fans. He helped to Tony make that particular part. He had some manufacturers and that was what led Tony into realizing that's what we could do is manufacture parts, which is really what we've grown into is a big manufacturer of Volkswagen parts.

 How would you describe Wellsburg west in, in like a sentence? What, what is it you guys do? Are you for the restorer? Okay. In one sentence, it's restoration quality. W do put that 79 in earlier, bugging boss restoration quality stock, stock parts, no. 

Before 79 and earlier, what, what is that?

What is that cut off represent, Aside from the first couple of years of the van, again, I would say air cooled. Right. Okay. And so originally you D didn't even deal with later air cooled cars, right? 

68 and later, like I said, I can't help you click  and I did that a lot. And now it's the bulk of your...

I would say it's, if you're going to say 50%.

Yeah. I'm going to say it's more than that. Sure. I'm happy. Well, not happy, but when I get somebody with a fifties car that doesn't happen as much as nearly as it used to. I 
bet. I bet. Okay.

Why do people like you and I love Volkswagens  

the nostalgia of it, probably. Certainly we are, everybody has a Volkswagen story. And so to see that car still alive now, and plenty of parts available, there's other things I like and parts are minuscule. So to have a plethora of parts available for a car that we and people are, even our parents drove when they were younger, that are iconic to, to culture, to American culture, to world culture for that matter and world history. It's, it's awesome that they made it this far. They, they never should have made it this far.  

It's awesome. That's right.  Now don't feel bad when you answered this question, because we all have an answer for this question, but tell me about a car that you've sold that you regret selling  do that. 

I knew that was coming a single cab that came from my buddy. Jeff, who also used to work here.  Yeah, that was probably, I don't have many regrets in my life. I'm pretty free of that, but this car. Yeah, because it was right before the market shot up. It was a 57 single cab at re blah, blah, blah, blah. I sold it for 2,500 bucks. It was complete tilt, the whole works. And  then, you know, it's probably a $25,000 car now. So yeah, I missed that car.  

No, wait, you, you said, blah, blah, blah. What are all the details? What is the blah, 

blah, blah. I had a Bob Mueller transmission or rebuilt 36 horsepower before the bed was reproduced the bed metal. I found another single cab from ed economy at Russ's recycling brought that home in the back of the single cab and Dale, the body guy next to me, I was like probably the first guy to have a bed replaced on a single cab.

Probably not, but you know, in my neighborhood it was so I've spent all that money. I think it was really super nice. And  I mean the money yeah. Went up a lot of money. I just, I just wanted to move on. Um, I bought a bay window, dude.  

Hey it's okay. My buddy is a bay window guy. So when he hears this episode, he's the original paint bay window from a junkyard, a salvage pop top 1970, 60,000 original miles.

Beautiful car. Hey, and I just recently sold that car not too long ago to build my Shasta bus. Oh, so God. So, Yeah, even my regret now, then the single capture, the bay window has turned back into an early bus, so maybe I'm not so sad. 

Okay, good. Good. And, and I of course have several cars that I can't really even think or talk about us.

The fact that I sold  that's next that's later, but my buddy, who's a bay window guy. He'll argue that you know, you get way better driving experience out of that bay window all day long. It's, it's different. Right. and so You mentioned a, in your story briefly, like, well, that was before the market shot up in your estimation. When did the market shoot up?  

 Well, I sold that single cab in 90  six or seven.  So roughly, just after that turn of the century, probably just before that 99 let's say.

Yeah. And what, what model commands the most money? 

Well, the deluxe buses.  

Right. Yeah. The, the, the split window bus in general, right? 

In general. Yes. People look at those. Oh, I can't afford that. I mean, you've seen the hunker junkers or  silly money. 

Absolutely. So I have a quick story that I'll relate.

So I went to college in Tucson at the U of a, and.  There was a place in town there, which last check has been a few years, but last check was still there and it was called uncle Bob's. And so Bob had two things. He had, he did service and he also had a little bone yard and yeah, it was cool. And so I was kind of one of the rug rats that would hang out at his boneyard.

And by the way, it was relatively small, but legit. Right. Cause these are,  yeah. And these are all like super dryers on the cars because the, I was sort of spoiled. I didn't understand what rust was. Okay. Cause I was from originally Nevada and they're in Arizona. And you know, I mean, I didn't even understand how rusty stuff could get.

And so anyway, I was there one day and I remember he said, come look at this. And so he took us around and he said, I just sold this to a guy in California for 10 grand. And it was a 21 window deluxe bus. And now he had you know, I'm doing bunny ears, people, he had restored it. And so, uh, you know, he'd, it was like  maroon below the belt line and white above the belt line.

And then on the inside, it was cool and complete a nice, but he had done like a Paisley headliner, you know,  but we were all like 10 grand. Yeah, no, you're a rich. Yeah.  you know, because in my mind at that time, You could get a split window bus for about 1500 bucks.  Yeah. And a bay window, if you wanted to slum, it was about seven 50. 

Right. So that brings me to another question is what is your philosophy on restoration?  

Well, philosophy  start with the car that has most of the parts,  or that is the least amount of rust  money. Shouldn't be an issue and you're better off spending more money upfront.  Too many times people will buy a car, do pan off, whatever, never finished it cause they just get into it or they get overwhelmed.

So I would say certainly start with something complete and, or not nearly rusty. I also say once he got it complete, the body worked on and in primer, put it together.  With the parts. I know it sounds crazy, but then take your parts off before you paint it because now, you know, the parts are going to fit at you're less likely to scratch it.

When it goes back together, it's double the work. However, assembly will be a breeze and you won't be worried about your car. When you get your box from anybody always open it and make sure the parts are there and make sure it's not damaged. William Porter, Dante keep a clipboard pad of paper with your car and always write down what you need because constantly people go, oh man, what do I need? What do I need? And sarcastically, I say, well, you need a list,  but it's true. Keep a list with ya. It's re restoration, not replaced duration.  

Maybe that's just me. What do you mean by that? Well, yeah, 

that's perfect. I would gladly take all the original knobs and nuts and bolts that people are replacing and clean them up on my wire wheel and, and love them and make my car that much more original.

Generally, you need to just clean things when you get it and then clean some more clean, clean, clean D Gouda, get rid of all the stickers, whatever don't throw anything away, at least up front.  

That's a great point.  Do you think restoration is good or would you prefer to preserve something and before you answer; so I, I kind of coined a phrase and maybe I didn't come up with it, but I,  usurped it and I use it a lot and that is What I like to call now rubberations,  where I get a car that can just be cleaned  and all I'm replacing is the rubber. And especially being from Arizona where, you know, there's no rust, but the rubber and the interior is all cooked and Chris' charcoal.

Well, that all needs to go so that, you know, it doesn't leak like a sieve, but everything else can be cleaned or refurbished. My dad used to say refurbished and you know, the fuel pump, all that stuff does not have to go. And so  what are, what are your thoughts on  restoration versus preservation?

It depends on the car you start with  and it depends what each person's philosophy is. However, I guess you're asking me what my philosophy is. Okay.  Well thinking about the two buses that I have now, apparently I'm a rubber   rubber, rubber ration. Yes, yes, yes. So yeah, I've cleaned the paints on both cars, replaced the rubber, done the drive, trains on them, done the upholstery. 

Some of them, not some of them, some of them have original street who had done very little, just clean and replace rubber as you need it. So, yeah, that's what I've done with both of my cars. What, what is it about original paint?  

Well, it's only original ones for starters, but they don't make it like they used to that paints awesome pain.

You know, you go get a car painted today. Single-stage, it's, you know, it's going to rain and it's going to come on. Uh, What's so great about original paint. Well, I mean, personally people might freak out, but you know, it's already scratched. So if I get a scratch in and I'm not freaking out, like I just spent 10 grand on something and, and you know, I get a rock chip.

Yeah. Bombed, but I didn't lose 10 grand on it. Right. 

Absolutely. And, and yeah, so that brings me to another point. Is there a point at which a car is too nice to drive and I'll give you an example. I had a, I had a 51 split window bug. It was right on the cusp there. And it was beautiful. I bought it from um, ah, I'm gonna forget his name now, but he was actually a brain surgeon from the, like the south.

This was like kind of like my first nice car that didn't need a restoration that I bought. And it was totally optioned, you know, the, the wool pillows, you know, all the cool stuff that comes on that split window. And you know, I was almost like, you know, I, I, I wanted to drive it, but then like, so I'd drive it to maybe like the grocery store, but then I'd park it like way far away, you know? 

I'd go in and start shopping and be like, nah, you're just going to take this. And I run back out and make sure it was okay. And then it started to get to where I was like, and by the way, this is like,  you know, I don't know, like a 99 or something. Right? Yeah. And started to get to where I was like,  now, now I can't drive it.

You know, I don't want to drive it there. It'll get hit. I don't want to drive it. There it'll get towed. I don't want to drive it there. Not to mention double clutching and you know, all that stuff, full crash trainee. It was totally original that in that way. I sold it, which was kind of a bummer because it was like too nice to enjoy. 

And have you restored cars yourself? 

I had a couple of restored cars. Yes.  

So they were restored when you bought them or you restored them myself. What were they? 

One was the deluxe bus? The other one was a camper.  And a European center of beetle, 58 or nine,  where the three that I did the bodywork painted. Did the restorations on,  

Are you pursuing any cars right now? 

No, I'd like to, but I have two that I'm happy with. Yeah. I've got an imagination and I want a lot of cars, but reality dictates I've only got room for two. 

Let's say you won the lottery and space and money were no longer an option. What would be the next thing?

You'd go and try and find and get silence.  Well, not a deluxe bus. No. Funny enough. Yeah, no I mean, honestly I want a 58 or a 59 European summer fetal again. I would really like to do that car. I'd like to do a stock 36 and I'd like to do a built 36. I love the interiors. I love the hole in the roof. It's been a long time since I've driven.  Yeah, that's probably the car I would do. Yeah. 

Well, it just so happens. You're describing one of the cars. I regret selling a 58 coral, a rag top that I sold. And I'll tell you why. I love that car. Raising Arizona, that film which came out when I lived in Arizona featured in several of the scenes.

If you go back and watch.  An original patina 58 choral bug rag top. In fact, it's in the pinnacle scene where you know, Nicholas cage is confronting the bad guy. It's parked right there and that's when you get the greatest shots of it, but it's in several scenes. And in fact, what's funny is the continuity person didn't really do their job because there's like a overhead view of their trailer out in the middle of the desert and the car is there, like on their property, like it's theirs, but it's not their car.

And then later at the fight scene, it's there at the bank. So now here's the crazy thing is I always wanted one of those cars, but you know,  money and other things dictate. And a few years ago, I'm going to say five years ago, that exact car came up for sale. Not one like it, that car. so I immediately reached out to the woman who was saying.

On the Samba  and by the way, I'm interviewing Everett, Everett Barnes next. Yeah. And I said to her stand by everybody.  I said, I want this car, you know, I, I said, I'm a VW guy and this is like my favorite movie. And, you know, I'm from Arizona. And she said, okay, well, you know, it's $27,000, you know?

And, and and by the way, so in the pictures, it was like she included some, what was cool, was actual stills from the set that were not part of the film like, and so come to find out, she was a costume lady on the film who was in Arizona local, and it still had the gold and green Arizona plates and all that. 

They had restored it since then, since then. And so the car they were selling was a restored version. 

Everybody has their version of restoration also. Exactly. 

And so what do you mean by that? 

Well, what do I mean by that? Some people will turn all of the screws, so they're exactly the same. I don't think they did that at the factory.

And then we, we, we were talking a minute ago when you were talking about cars that are too nice.  I mean, my general philosophy is cars are meant to be driven.  However, it's the other guy that you gotta worry about.

You know, I've heard of too many people drive in their barn doors from long distances to send the California shows. Yeah. They go slow and people just are  aren't considerate  of that. So yes, you have to worry about. And just getting into an accident, six volt headlights at nighttime. So there's the dangers of that.

There's the dangers of driving. Say a Romesh you don't take your Romesh out to go get groceries, but the problem with cars is sitting with all the fluids is of course, they'll go bad. Then you get into drive him in you're and an accident. So it's, it's a real catch 22, unless you're draining fluids and make it a museum piece, or you have somebody working for you full time.

So you can talk to me the keys and I'm in and I'm out.   

You mentioned barn doors, what's a barn door, a barn door is a bus that was made from, well, at the beginning of bus time, through February of 55, they've got the real large uh, engine door.

Uh, So the barn door is in the back, not on the side.  

That brings me to another topic, which is the misuse of vernacular and phrases.  So when I had my 51 split window beetle, the licensed light was a Pope nose. Now that's you know, for those of you listening, that's not a politically correct term. Okay.

But the fact is it's a term used,  we did a bag it up and it was like that when we got into the scene. Absolutely. So we called that last slide, Pope knows. And so to me, the later licensed site, I always refer to that as an eggshell, but nowadays you can not go on the Samba without somebody calling that eggshell a Pope's nose, why it was called the Pope's nose.

Why? 

Well, you take the license light housing off the engine lid, and it had a kind of a nose. And apparently the Pope at the time, it looks like Kilroy to me. But anyway, it's not the beak as some people will say or the housing, but it's the impression on the engine lid. And it only looks like a Pope's nose on a split beetle.

What. 

Terms, do people misuse that you could think of off the top of your head miss use or just a slang for parts? 

Well, either one, but you know, for example, you brought up the barn door and so often people confuse the side cargo doors with the large rear engine lid. That is on what we're referring to as a barn door bus.

So what else can you think of anything else like that they'll say like American bumpers or American rubber and yeah, a lot of the cars came over to America and got that, but it was either European market or export market. That's probably just a technicality that I can think of at the moment.  I can think of all sorts of slang or V Bonac terms, rich Kimball.

And I have talked about that, you know, well, let's see. McDonald's arches. DEC led a bumblebee deck that I've got a whole list of these things written down. I even talked to Ronnie over an old folks' home and wanted to get his information. I just, the, the, the cute names ice pick doorhandles just, just cute silly names for things I'm trying to collect those tons of stock, I just use those terms normally too. Cause I guess I, cause I do treasure chest used to bother me. Oh yeah. Are what kind of treasure do you have? Right. And so I called it a cargo locker cause I read that in the parts book, but I found a piece of Volkswagen literature and it said treasure chest.

So I've backed off and I don't cry every treasure chest anymore. Oh really? Yeah. The factory, they were calling it that well and Volkswagen literature, I want to say the parts book said cargo locker, at least in the one parts book I'd looked at, which is where I got that term.  

Tell me about what a typical day looks like for you here at Wilson request.  

I get here early and get here at seven 30 in the morning. I punch in at eight,  I'll make myself a fruit and vegetable smoothie.

And then I do my own personal work, whether I'm doing some restoration of pop-out windows for a friend right now, or whether I'm shipping some stuff for a, for a friend of mine, but just kind of personal  Volkswagen car shop related kind of things. I'm allowed to use the workbench here and the tools and the lift and things that we had.

So could work in my own business and even break. So then eight o'clock comes through and I check the internet phones. Come on. So I'm doing internet orders talking on the phone. Uh, I take a break somewhere in the middle of that. I take my lunch still answering the phones by this time. Well, I'm not out in the warehouse pulling parts too much anymore uh, but I'll run back and forth to the warehouse and grab parts when customers have a question uh, and I'm out at four 30 and on all of my breaks again, I try and go do that restoration work in the workshop.

I rarely sit on the internet and waste my time doing that.  I guess that's a typical day.  And so you were technically employee number two. And so you have known Tony Moore for a long time,  and you were saying that, you know, originally he was it and he was a one man show.

What was your impression of like how he started this company and what got him into this company? 

You know, he worked for green motors in Whittier, California. So Volkswagen, Volkswagen dealerships.

So he's got some Volkswagen, if you call it certification, training, whatever, but Volkswagen history. He also worked for Bob Scott at vintage parts. And for people that don't know Bob Scott, I consider him the grandfather of Volkswagen parts because he would have just nos stuff up the yin yang. Cause there wasn't really much reproduction stuff.

So Tony worked for him and then wanted to go on his own and, and did, and reproduced the bear claws and went from there. So that's roughly sister, I mean  another part about him, he restored a 55 convertible twice cause he restored it. thought it was brilliant. He had his buddy Bob boats come on. And look at the car and they decided, well, this, that, and the other could be better, nicer, more correct. And my favorite story about Tony is he drove,  I don't even remember how far, but quite a ways to buy a door, just to get a Ventling seal off of it.

Cause he couldn't find it. So he realized, man, there's, there's a need for reproduction parts here. And, and doing that convertible is really what inspired him to open the doors.  

And so I'm assuming that he has a myriad of vendors who reproduce parts for him all over the place. 

Absolutely. I mean, actively is in search of that.

And as a matter of fact, taking it under his wing to do a lot of the CAD drawings and preparation work and field.  Uh, For these. So he's really involved in the restoration overseen a lot of that. He's well involved  

and I know that he takes the quality seriously and the correctness, as you know, very seriously, for example, not too long ago, I was um, and, um, it didn't, it had like homemade wood paneling, , uh, you know, front, the front door panels and kick panels. And so the old days before these parts were available, that's what we had to do is make 
it, yeah. You go to home Depot and you get whatever and you know, and people weren't trying to be correct.

They were just trying to vinyl on it.  Shove some like, you know, insulation in there to 
insulation that's right. I had that same car.  

 So when I went to look on your website, it was not in stock. And I was like, oh, whoa. You know, like, oh, they don't have it. And so I was a little scared, but then, you know, I think I called and I may have talked to you.

I talked to somebody and whoever I talked to said, well, you know, Tony, wasn't satisfied with you know, our, our original vendor, like went out of business or something happened. And then you know, we're just still looking for someone to make it right. You know, we're not going to just slap whatever.

And I was like, oh, okay. And I kind of was like, well, that's that, I guess now never going to find those again. Yeah. And, but sure enough, you haven't been stock again and they're, and they're brilliant and they're perfect. Right. You 

know, there's there's, I mean, markets, grocery stores always have eggs and milk, and we come to expect these things for our lifestyle.

And it's a bummer dude, when, when a wheel cylinder is not available for your bus and now all there is for early bus wheel cylinders is Chinese aftermarket. That's kind of scary. And, and this is stuff that's decent from China and Taiwan, but overall yeah, it has that reputation. So yeah. As far as making parts?

Yeah. There's, there's parts that just won't be available for awhile. Certainly SWF and Bosch had stopped making things, and we were lucky to have those parts for so long because they were, they fit other cars, you know, Volkswagen, wasn't the only car that these companies made parts for. And, and even Brazil, we owe a lot to Brazil in that orange sheet metal, because if it wasn't for that, that was what we started with.

We might not be here today, having this conversation with the quality and restoration parts that are available.  

Where do you see our we'll call it our hobby? I mean, it's it's, it's my hobby. It's currently your profession slash hobby. Where do you see it going?  

Can't go much higher. Everybody's saying, oh, as the market dropping market dropping, but I don't particularly see that happening too much.

I think my buddy said when some Disney Pixar film came out, we've made it because the, the Volkswagen buses that are in this cartoon and you can go steal a little playground and there's buses. I mean, buses are in our culture now and the bus is not going to go away. Legos are making models. It's buses are everywhere when we were, when I was in the buses.

And when this started, you couldn't find a bus toy to save your life and Beatles and buses have beyond switched  oppositely. 

How.  How about newer Volkswagens? Have you ever owned a, like a non air-cooled Volkswagen? Like anything that's more recently produced by them?  

I won't buy a new car from Volkswagen.

However, my daily driver is a agenda and I used to drive a 96 Jetta four-door sunroof. That was as old as my 66 was when I bought my first car. So I was very proud of that. I don't want anything with that's overly too. Anyway, I drove an oh eight now it's got power windows. But I don't want the computer chips to be computer screens, all that big, gnarly stuff.

So it's still a car right now. It has a radio dash, not a computer brain and all this other stuff, so yeah. Yeah. I drive an oh eight, Jenna. 

I bought a new beetle, just full, full disclosure. Oh, one  third year came out. That's right. Yes, that's right. It's 98 Monday. It was just a small section. Right, right.

And in 98.  I was working for my brother. I lived in Las Vegas and they came out and we went and looked and there was only three or four colors. It was a red, white, black, and blue. And then the next year they threw in like the cyber green and all that. And so I was hooked, you know, but like, I didn't have any money.

And so then I bought mine. I was driving back from Arizona cause I lived here now in oh one and I was driving back from Arizona and.  And I only, I only lived in Vegas for a little while at that point. Cause I lived here first. I went to Vegas to work for my brother and I was driving by paradise Volkswagen at the time off of the 10 there.

And like, I guess it's like India or a cathedral city. Yeah. And up on one of those rotating pedestals was a Mojave beige, which was like, you know, when your only color, it was like gold, basically it's a gold new beetle.  And so I, my, well, not my first, but my second Volkswagen was a based 69 square back.

And I thought, oh, this is kind of like a cool play on like no old and new. And so when I got home, I called them and that was the very first and only new car I've ever purchased in my life. So that was brand new w well, okay, so it had 64 miles on it or no, six, 6,440 miles on it.  One of their service technicians bought it.

And then soon after he bought it, he found out his wife was pregnant. And so they decided they needed a four door. And so he bought, because it has so few miles, I still got like new car financing and all that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And so.  I drove my square back out there with my friend and I drove my new car home in my friend, drove my square back home.

I still have that car because I have a problem. I don't get rid of cars. I just find them, keep them.  Yeah, I do actually. I'm fortunate that way.   So you have any interest in the uh, the new electric Volkswagens that are 

coming out. I'm not really much of a fan of modern cars. This one that we were talking about.  I bought from were melted back Volkswagen used to be in the Harbor. That was my local dealership. And the license plate frame said, Ella, which is my dog's name. So I knew that was the car I had to have.  And I've never purchased a car from a dealership like that ever. It's always been cash, you know, whatever recycler kind of a thing. No, I'm not interested in modern cars. People ask me when I'm in the grocery store, books, magazines, that's over my head. It might as well be a Toyota or something.

How does me all the time? I just had a woman I work with because you know, my entire wardrobe is VW stuff, unfortunately. Right. You know everybody, and she said, you know, my, my daughter has a, you know, a 2018 new beetle and this is doing with the window. What do we? And I said, I have no idea. You know?  I do not know.

Yeah. So I'm, I'm in the same boat there. All right, well,  okay. Jetta is, it has a radio in it.  This is the first car. How with Eric.  Well, we already discussed what our ages are, but yeah, it's the first car ad with air conditioning dude ever in my life. 

Well, I'm, I'm I'm with you. So that O one was the first car and I, and I lived in Arizona  air cooled VWs in Arizona, tough man, holding the big goal between the legs.

Cause it's a type three and there's no baskets yet. None of that stuff. Right. Get out, completely sweat soaked back and, you know, got my big gulp and yeah, I mean, it's probably good for you. It's like owning a sauna, you know, you didn't have a cell phone on the other hand. No, it was right. Exactly.

Exactly. You, you mentioned the recycler. So w what is that about? What do you mean by that? The recycler changed my life. I mean, that was before internet. So, you know, it was advertisement after advertisement, car for sale car for sale parked for sale guitars for sale household items for sale. My friends would come from out of the. 

And I live right near the recycler main center. And so they would buy it all at some in California, like 20 magazines. And so if you were buying and flipping cars, you wanted to be that first guy and anything you wanted was in that magazine.  

I moved to Southern California in the early nineties and I distinctly remember my girlfriend and I lived together at the time and I go get the recycler and I'd go through.

And I mean, there was like, you know, fifties buses and all kinds of stuff, you know, because the way they did it was they broke it down. Was it by like alphabetical is like V or they broke it down by year. I can't remember. They might've broke it down by year and you can buy V cause I seem to remember going to the last section I'm working my way up and Volvo is being right next to Volkswagen.

Yes. 

And it was sort of a play on like the Hemmings motor news, which I think still does it. But uh, yeah, there was nothing like the recycler, I mean, talk about stories. So at the time I lived in the south bay  You know, it's funny too, the way our tastes changed, because I was just a type three guy.

I just wanted to type three stuff, you know, I wanted, and my type three, I loved. And by the way, I still own it. I bought it from the original owner. Her name's Marian the car or the person the, the, the, the person who sold it to me, his name was.   So I wanted an earlier type three, you know, and so this guy had an ad and he was in like torrents type area and me and my girlfriend went and looked and he had like 30 VWs just packed.

And he was older. He was probably pushing 80. He was like covered in pet hair, you know, and he got up and he was like, ah, and I mean, you could barely shimmy between these cars. And I was probably walking past 58 rag, top bugs and stuff that I was like, whatever, you know, I could care less. Where's the, and he had one beat down, you know, 67 type three that was like painted silver out of a cat that was shining out of all.

That was, that was what I wanted, you know, and.  And, but then there, there reached a point where I wanted a split window bus, you know?  so I bought one out of south central and yeah. Yeah. I didn't know any better. So I went into south central by myself. Yeah. It's like when I drove that same square back way down in New Mexico,  never do that nowadays, right?

No, I mean, I remember pulling off of the freeway because there were potholes bigger than the car and filling up at the Pemex gasoline. It was like backfiring. And then on my way out of the country, they stopped me. And they searched the entire car. They pulled me and my girlfriend out, you know, we were long hairs at the time.

And like, they gave us the third degree and they separated us. And of course we were like, what? You know, like we were clean as a whistle and we didn't have anything to hide, but I remember they, they brought out dogs and they brought out mirrors and they brought out all this stuff and they looked everywhere, but they did not open the trunk, the front hood.

They didn't open the front hood because I think they.  There's like an engine up there.  

I could add like a dead body and a pound of cocaine and they wouldn't even have looked, you know,  anyway. Um, are we ever going to run out of AWS?  

Yeah. Well, not in our lifetime, but the more they get exported or the more they get in an accident. Yeah. The less there are, because there's only so many  or at least so many cool ones someday. Yeah. And earlier I think I asked you like, you know, where's this hobby going and, and so I, I think my line of thinking on there is I have a son he's 11 He's a great kid and, you know, whatever, I like, he, he supports me.

Right. And so he tolerates my Volkswagen habit. But you know, if I'm sure if I wasn't around and you asked him, he'd go, well, they're really slow. They're super loud. I mean, it is uncomfortable. And the thing stinks, you know? And so that's his perspective and he's constantly like, when are we buying a Tesla?

You know, like he doesn't get it. Right. You know, will there reach a point? I kind of liken it to like the early hot rod guys and stuff. And like, it's kind of like, they've sort of reached their peak and, you know, in value. And then it's a simple supply and demand thing. Right. And so like when those ranks thin out and there's not as many people who have.

Connection and the you know, memories of the car. Is there ever going to come a point where there's more cars than buyers? I think that right now there's more buyers than cars because it's a global thing. But what do you think, correct me if I'm wrong? 
Well,  I think that a lot of children, at least from friends that I had dad, don't pick me up in school with that Volkswagen.

Can you not? I'm embarrassed.  A buddy of mine just stayed with me. He's like, you know, I really like this car. I'd like to have my child inherit this. This is nicer than whatever. So I think people want to pass those cars on to their children that might get it when, when they get older. Because again, they're iconic and, but they're, they're not the internet, cars are not the Teslas.

And yes, when interest goes, what's going to happen. Are you interested in a model, a or a model.  Probably not, you know, but maybe my dad or our parents would have been because their parents were doing those. So yeah, you're right. As the generations go on that, that might show that's my phone  sounds like a doggy squeak to it. 

So yeah, I never thought of it more cars than buyers. Cause I was looking at it all just kind of thinning away and going away. Cause a lot of the pioneers of this industry have already started to 

disappear.  That's kind of why I was touching on the.  Junkyards, because when I started to notice the junkyards disappearing, I became alarmed and I kind of felt like, oh, you know, Russ's recycling my buddy, who's the bay window guy.

We would go there all the time and we had almost like a thing, cause he'd go, Ooh, I found these turn signal lenses and I didn't have the money, but I stashed. And so like, I'm going back there when I get paid. And then I go and I'd find him and I'd buy him. He'd be like, don't tell me where you are. 

But I don't know if you remember, but RAICES was like big and then they like shrink it down a little and then they shrink. And then pretty soon it was this one little like, yeah, it was like this one little aisle. Yeah. The heyday stuff. I there was a  huge, so I think I mentioned, you know, I moved here in the early nineties, but at one point in the late nineties, I went to work for my brother-in-law's Vegas and. 

He would send me out into the field to do errands for the place. And, and I was unaware, but there was this huge Volkswagen  junkyard. And you know, not that I wasn't working, I, I did my job first, but on the way back, I stopped at this junkyard, you know, having already accomplished toilet. Right. I did, I needed to use the toilet  and a phone.

There's no cell phone. Well, I did have like a walkie talkie cause we were, we were cool like that. Right. The pager. But it was, I'm gonna say, and this is, you know, a rough estimate and my younger mind, but it was like 20 acres of VWs. And so  you could just drive right in and I kind of parked and I started wandering kind of like, I'm sure I looked like a zombie, you know, and, and the guy came up to me and he said, yeah, what's up.

And I said you know, how much are the cars? And he had a car crusher that he was drafted.  And he was just loading them in there and crushing them and putting the block back the little cube back where it was. And he said without a title, it's 50 bucks with the title, it's a hundred bucks.  And uh,  I mean there's w deck lids everywhere.

And so again, I was broke and so I bought some, actually what I found was the identical square back that I have, and I kind of scavenged some cool parts off of that, you know, beige parts and interior parts that were toast on mine. And I probably spent like a hundred bucks. I didn't have, you know, and it was, and, but I was like, ah, and I said, how much longer are you going to be here?

And he goes, oh, we gotta be out at the end of the month. They're going to build like a race track here.  And so it's, las Vegas international Raceway is what they built there. That's how big it was by the way it took up. They bought that land from this guy,  all, nothing but Volkswagen.

And I mean, I spent hours there. I was going inside buses. It's just like, oh man, I'm telling you, you know? And um,  there was a fifties convertible Ghia that was like so dry. And so I went and asked my dad, like, will you help me get this? You know? And he was like, okay. And he was kind of a car guy too, but yeah, but he was remarried and, so later he came and he said like, yeah, you know, I'm  not going to happen.

Right. And I went back like kind of, you know, the kid with like a third of the money that's needed, you know? And he was like, no, sorry.  So anyway that's a constant theme of I'm thinking of is you know, as things dry up the internet took all that away.  And, and I'm going to say, it's what made the prices.

Absolutely. Right. And it's a blessing because you can find anything you want and it's a curse because of the prices. Right. That's right. '

cause like we were saying before that it was all penny saver and so, you know, whatever it was around your area. And then all of a sudden I could buy my split window bug from this brain surgeon in, you know, Kentucky or wherever he was at and have it shipped.

And back in the day, shipping was still kind of afford affordable. Sure. 

Is Wolfsburg west going to always be in this location? Is this the last location?

Are they going to actually outgrow this? 

Every location we said, we're never going to move. So of course it's still at this point, we're saying we're not currently. We are trying to find more space. So we're cleaning and making more space for.  Stuff, because, you know, you make a lot of parts, you got to warehouse a lot of parts.

Where did he get the name? Wolfsburg west. Was it just something that came to him, buddy of his, I believe that came up with the name because of course the beetle was made in Wolfsburg and so they were having a conversation and his buddy to said, you know, cutely, oh, why didn't you call it Wolfsburg west?

Well, of course it had a great ring and Tony stuck with it. 

Nice. so how many years have you worked here? I've been here since April of 89 truth be told I did quit and I worked for BFY. I worked for rich Kenville. And then I was fortunate enough to have Tony hire me back. And that year that he hired me back, he sent me myself and three other employees to battle. 

Oh, basically all expenses paid. Wow. Oh, and not to mention I got insurance too. So all of that was this big. I was so glad I came back. I'm so lucky. I was so blessed. You know, people go, do you regret that? Yeah, no, I don't because I learned the grass is not greener on the other side. That was good for me and healthy.

What I did, then I am blessed and fortunate to have what I have now.  

BFY I know I went there while it was open. Was that in Burbank or no, that was vintage  orange. 

That was who Tony worked for at the time vintage parts who had, he was in Sunland also. BFY bugs for you was in orange and that opened a neat, well, it doesn't matter what it opened.

83 before. 

Yeah, it's a competitor. Well, not anymore.  

Oh yeah. That's another thing people say competitor. Well, we wholesale out to a lot of people, which is great wholesale business and support those shops that we wouldn't be where we're at without the wholesale. So competition, there's a few companies and we all know the names that make parts in that are big and have a lot of. 

That's probably where the competition is, but there seems to be enough pie for everybody there does. And you know, when I was young reading my hot VWs I went to the competition, another place in Harbor city there. And then as soon as I discovered Wellsburg west, it was like, there was no comparison because like, you know, do you guys sell the uh, Cal style rubber without the GRU for the Chrome?

We don't because we're stock restoration quality. So cow look, wasn't stocked. So we don't sell it. I get a lot of calls for it. So maybe it's still like, yeah, we only do 67 and earlier we don't have to catalog. Maybe there's still a little bit of that. There are the 
Hawaiian, the white rubber. 

You remember that said that didn't last long, but I remember that it's kinda like, it went the way of VW trends, right?

Trends is back now. Oh, is it really? I saw them at the classic last week and I think they've put up maybe eight issues now.  I've only seen one of them hard, like hard copy, not just digital stuff, but actual magazines. 

You can touch it.  You know,  that's what I'm hoping. I'm hoping I learned stuff in these podcasts.

So I just learned that.  All right. Well, again I could see her all day and ask you questions, but um,  if we had bear, yeah. The sun would go down and go, oh, look at the traffic stop now. Do you have anything you want to say the listeners before we go walk through.   

I'm no different than they are. I'm just a dude who liked Volkswagens, who lived close to Wolfsburg west. And I got to know the owner. He hired me. I'm a hobbyist. Really? I'm just a human.  

Well, the, the description you just gave makes you different than every single person who's listening to this podcast right now.

But I think ultimately you're right. And let me tell you, that's interesting that you say that because bar none, almost everyone I've talked to has said the same thing or something similar because you know, I'll say like, Hey, it's, it's my hobby, but it's your career? And so blah, blah, blah. And almost all of them.

No, I think all of them have said like, no, it's still my hobby. You know? 

So my hobby, yes, it's my career. It was an accident. It became my career. I wished for popularity, you know, in, in high school or, or in rock and roll bands, never quite got that. I realized the popularity. I have.  But I hope it's not because I work here.

Well, I don't know. I think I mentioned to you on the phone because when, you know, when I first called you, I said like, I know who you are. You don't know who I am because I'm one of the masses. And so you do hold like a, we'll say a quasi celebrity. I can't deny 
that. That's just true with any  customer employee relationship or business relationship.

Yeah. Right. 

I'm one of the masses, you're a single point of contact that people seek out and like, you know, I even see, and for years I've years and years, I mean, you know, over a decade, probably two decades, I've called. And I know when you pick up the phone, I can recognize your voice. 

I opened my mouth at car shows that rich Morris voice gives me away. 

Now kind of going back to customers, you know, there's customers that will call and I just have a great relationship with them. And they call, they ask for me, they're my customer and whatever. I enjoy speaking to them. They're regulars and we'll have, you know, quite a few minutes of conversation about the car, about our BS is whatever.

And then we take the order and then we're done. So they, they become my friends over the years. And I really enjoyed that. Working here.  

You're a musician you just mentioned, are you play an instrument? I prefer bass. Okay. And you've been in bands. 

Oh man. Too many to count. I mean, outside of originally aspiring to be a musician, cause by the way I I'm, I'm part of a garage band too.

Right. I'm the singer. And but, but outside of that, has there ever been a time where you thought I should have done something else? Like did it ever, was it ever like, you know, working here sort of like almost overtook and maybe like ruined it for you sort of, or no, 
I've burned out twice, twice in, in the Mo you do the math since 89.

Where I was just going to too many shows. You know, at work a 40 hour week and, and same for everybody here because you know, we're hobbyist, we like it, but we do it every day. And now I'm not going to all of the shows because I'm enjoying my time here. Oh, I just went to Okta classic. It was great.

I felt like a young child again, I've been reinspired. But yeah, I burnt out and didn't go to shows for a while. Yeah.  

Do people have people over the years ever um, tried to take advantage of you because of your closeness to all these parts, you know, have you ever given me something free? Anything like that? 

Yeah. There's been a couple of shysters that have tried, uh sure, sure. Yeah, that happens. 

That's just life. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But you've you dealt with that. 

I dealt with that.  Tony gives me the blanket of trust. And let me tell you that I'm not going to blow that  it's so made here. I mean, my office was that of a room of a teenager, you know, and what, what, what company, much less person is gonna allow you to do that?

I don't have to dress corporate I've I've got it made and I'm not going to give away some free part and get fired and lose everything that I have. Um, But yeah, people like, Hey, let me take this part and go look and see if it fits in my car. And that was a long time ago, but dude walked out,  it was a $5 part, but it's not the $0.50, $500.

It's the same thing to me. Or yeah, I need to return a part. It's got an issue with it and it didn't have the issue or the problem or never came back. Yeah. There's been stupid things, but  that such a small infant tile percentage, would you say generally VW people are cool people.  

No. 

I hate everybody equally, which probably you should fucking edit that  

hell no, that's in there. That's in there for good, Volkswagen people are probably no different than, than Chevy people or whatever. We all have our idiosyncrasies. We're all car people maybe, but no, I don't think Volkswagen in particular is any different than any other fender guitar people or, or whatever.

No, no.  Fair enough. It's cool people in the VW industry, which those are the, well, the ones that I hang out with are the ones that I feel they're cool and keep me inspired and excited and, and, and, and at least happy. And when I'm sad, understand my woes. 

Am I correct  that you have a great deal of respect and trust for Tony Moore?

Yes, I do. Absolutely. I mean, I wouldn't be who I am without working.  

What is it about him that makes you trust him so much? 

He doesn't micromanage for starters. He's given me raises, I mean, the only person does that, but he's given me what I thought was more than he should've given me more than I he's found value in me.

He's he's instilled how a work ethic in me.  He's done a lot for me. 

Okay, great. I love it. All right. Let's well, thank you very much for interviewing me. 

I look forward to hearing it is my pleasure. I really can't tell you how much it means to me. I mean, you are doing me a huge solid here and I mean, to be honest, if you could rewind my life back to a, you know, me as a kid, riding my bike to get my hot VW in Tempe, Arizona, to me now here with you, or even over the years, like seeing you at shows and coming to your different local. 

This is this is awesome. This is amazing. So I really want to tell you  I have arrived, right?  

So  you know what it is, put them back from your you're a giver into the community cause there's givers and they're takers and Tony is one of the givers, the way we sponsor things and, and small shows. Uh, So yeah, there's givers and they're takers and, and you're a giver now with, with your whole, 

I love it.  And so, Yeah, this is the we're coming back down into the main area here. There's just tons of cool memorabilia on the walls.

Um, Um, is the original artwork. This is.  Really, Is the original artwork. This is.  Really, this is what's a Petro. Did that, the left, those were made off of, so that's not a print.  This is genuine. This is all genuine. 

Absolutely. And then of course, the prototypes to get to where we needed to get 

to we'll leave the exact location, a secret. 

Yeah. Well, we want to make it a little bit uh, I guess classier, so hence beautiful artwork here. This is also an original uh, but genuine, you know, factory stuff. Those are two more originals over there, so we're just trying to keep things.  

So we're in like a, what I'd call, maybe like a break room area here. 

Okay. Oh, so this is like the lobby. So most people like myself, I've never been in here even though I've been coming here for years because I'll just pick stuff up at will-call. And so I don't usually get to come and see this part. Now I have been inside the warehouse one other time. I don't know if you recall, but a few years ago I noticed on the website that you could click a link and it brought you to some complete 36 horse engines. 

And so I called and said, oh, I want one of these. And he said, come on down. And I believe Tony himself brought me around and said, you can pick, these are the ones that are left and then a different employee who I'm not as familiar with, kind of stood by. Yeah, well, I, well, we finished up and that was the one time. 

Any deeper into the warehouse just moved all the leftover engines out. 

Oh really? Yeah.  Okay, cool. And I remember the guy that helped me said, hold on a second. I don't, I don't think this is right. I, hold on, let me go check with Tony. And he went and, and, and Tony said, no, no, they're there just whatever's on there because the one I picked had a really cool exhaust.

It had like a um, industrial kind of exam. No, it was like an EPR sparker exhaust that usually go on early Porsche's gas heater.  Yeah. 

Yeah. No. And that was the thing. He was like, you don't get this one. And I said, no, he said I could pick whichever one. So I still have that engine. Yeah. It's kind of beat up, but I knew, I knew it was cool.

Yeah. I knew it was cool. All right. So let's keep going. 

Oh, well here, this is every VW classic poster.  Well, starting from the very beginning, wrapping around one wall, two walls, three walls. 

Well,  I mean, here it goes out of St. Back here.  Y'all get out of your way.  

So now we're in the main warehouse, which is pretty expensive. How many square feet? We're just under 30, 30,000 square feet. And let me tell you, there's literally parts shrink, wrapped in boxes up to the ceiling. I have a little view of this is miscellaneous aisle.

This is a wreck. I'm moving all of this, but this is where we. Seconds, genuine parts, used parts stuff that we could have given to people for a discount, whatever it's all moving. 

Okay. And then I see actual whole cars back here.  And so now I'm, I'm, I'm on the other side of the will-call area, which I usually love because there's a ton of uh, nos parts.

 And, um, there's like a display case and there's t-shirts and it looks like Tony's got his hands on quite a few dealership signs and whatnot to 

that's. One of the things he likes would be the dealership signs of the porcelain signs got this neon unit up here that his wife bought for him uh, for his birthday years ago.

That's a genuine flag. There there's four more genuine flags there. There's our old signs from more on Lambert road underneath. This would be a good picture underneath the genuine Volkswagen sign up there or signs there. So yeah, I'd say so now, would you say that Volkswagen is aware of.  Like, do you have any sort of a smart people?

They know we're around and we've had interactions with them and, you know, we, we,  
but yeah, but they're okay with you. I mean, they, they know you exist and they understand what you're doing. I'm not breaking any licensing agreements. 

That's right. And, and nobody else's keeping the dream alive. Like you are so things that are good like us,  but I got to few or one of the many whatever you want to look at when I got to imagine that, like, you know, they're reintroducing this um, electric bus, they're calling it the ID buzz.

Right. And so I can only assume that that's going to kind of reinvigorate interest in the older buses, the new beetle did that really helped our industry as well. Did it? 

And so you saw like a swell of . Wilsher mentioned the century, you know, after that the new beetle came out. Absolutely. Okay, cool.

Now, when you're talking about being out in the warehouse and seeing things in shelves, I would explain to you.  In the olden days, we had everything in numerological order from Volkswagen, you know, from, well, from the beginning of the early part, never to the last part number it could be. But as you can imagine, as we get something new, we'd have to fit a little cool.

We'd have to fit another shelf or bin in between things and just want to work out. So now we have everything to been located and, you know, the parts you could have a, an engine partner, one side of the building and another one that should be right next to it on the other side. But our idea is, is right here, which is the main section.

These rows are supposed to be the things that we sell the most of. And then as you move your way out, you have to walk further. So you can pull out as quicker, quicker, quicker keep the efficiency up. So we've gone to Ben location. 

Wow. Okay, cool. For overstock,  all, all of these parts over on this other side, on this pallet rack, it's going to be all overstock.

Wow. Which is around the corner there receiving and what to do with those five of those.  And then even this is, we use this as overstock. We even have to pull from here now because we're running out of room and hence, my miscellaneous shelf are stealing that using room for that.  

Oh wow. You even have like a lift over there.

I never knew that shins a car from hot PDWS it's on there. They are going to be experimenting with our 74 millimeter crank which is also a car that we did when we were developing the, across the style dual port heads. So yeah, it's I Tony's let me use that lift on my cars and employees get to use the lift.

So we're very lucky to have that, but we don't do work. It's just parts. Is that a 58? 

Eight or nine? Yeah. It's is it um, what color is that?  

I don't know the name of that. 

I don't know the name of that either, but some funky gold  it's it's familiar. Cool. And so, uh, is this Tony single cab? There's also, this looks like the single cab that I used to have that regret selling really dark clothes.

I see. Cool. 

And that's a convertible. 

Uh, Does he still have the one he restored twice? No. 

That got sold the Burton Burton, the Casa Blanca guy that I talked to earlier. Yeah. He had it. Well, that's what enabled Tony to start. Wolfsburg west was the sale of that car. 

Well, you touch on an interesting subject because he, that I know a couple guys like I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but maybe, you know, the dude that started simple shoes.

Oh yeah, yeah, sure. He sold three convertible Karmann. Ghia says I knew that. And then I think yeah, anyway, I know that that's like a common theme is people. Oh. And then, you know, even outside of the VW industry the guy who started apple sold his bus. Right. So that's the other thing I think about a lot. 

The like infinite resale value. How much money do you think these cars have generated? You know, because  I'll tell my son about, you know, prices and how like, oh, well, back when I was a kid, you know, this was like nothing and he'd go and he knows that nowadays they're expensive and he'll go, well, why is it so cheap?

And I'll say, well, because it, like, wasn't really a collector's item yet. And it hits sort of like bottomed out and it was just an old car  and inflation. 

Wasn't what it is today. Yeah. And you know, it was like throwaway and that's why everybody was buying them because I bought it for 50 bucks. I'll just cut it up, you know?

And but now it's come so far the other direction that when I think about, I wonder how much revenue, you know, these things have generated and they've far surpassed their original sale value by so much, you know,  

Well, so if this sold for two grand back in the day, and if they're selling for 40 grand already in one sale, that's 20 times that plus how many times has it sold before that?

It's it's crazy, right? 

Yeah. One car probably could have generated, I don't know, a couple of hundred thousand dollars maybe more, maybe more some for sure. More. Yeah. 

Let me walk you through a little more. Yeah, let's go over here and see what we got. We'll take some pictures of this.

What's this stuff here. 

Family members vehicle. 

And then I think under this cover here, if I'm not mistaken, it's a, one of the, the panel bus that used to be on your they used to be on your catalog.  I pay attention. I try I'm new at this, but I'm trying, are you taking notes? Bronze that bro, that's such an obvious name. 

It's like a bronzy color. I don't know. Duh. Yeah, it might be bronze or it might be diamond.  I think it's broadens. Yeah. I think it was bronze too, which is a 58 or 59 only. That's correct. Yeah. Yeah, so this is super cool. They have a lift. And so you guys, aren't actually doing service here, but you're allowing this car to kind of be a Guinea pig.

Absolutely. Okay. And then Shannon of course do some articles. And then for the magazine, what are these folks over here? This is production. So at the moment it looks like they're doing silicone valve cover gaskets. They'll bound some rubber with rubber bands and labeled them for the shelves. Um, The we've got a break where we used to install our running board mats.

We've got a press where we'll press out our cocoa mats and other material.  Uh, We'll cut carpet back here. We drill the bumpers for buses to become export model bumpers. Uh, We cut and bend the window moldings back here  and I'm out of breath. That's just off the top of my head. What we're doing back here.

That's a lot, that's a lot. And there's quite a few more people. It's an its own entity.  Equally as equally as equal, equally as important to pulling up pulling orders and getting them out to the client. And you guys also buy stuff wholesale, like for example, from, you know, like we buy from west coast metric, we've got a ton of TMI stuff.

It's fallen off the shelf we buy from MP, we buy from  vendors. Sure. 

And so you don't really consider them competition. It's just like, there's enough for 
everyone,  you know, I suppose there's some of the bigger names that would be competition that you pretty much exactly what we do,  but we're still friends with them.

We still buy from them. They buy from us and I say hi to them at the shows and we'll chat them up, whatever. We're all in the same ministry. It's a small world. You're all hobbyists. Some of them might not be, I don't know. But we're all on the same gig. 

Sure. Okay. Let's be friends. All right. So walk me towards the we'll call and I'll grab my part and then I'll let you get back to your day and  you want to see what. 

Man. 

Well, you grabbed your engine probably was straight down against that wall. Absolutely. Right. You just go see that so you can see that's changed because a few more left up there. That's right.  So this shelf just went in this P that wasn't there before cars used to go a little deeper, but that's new shelf space,  about two or three more rows with it.

This is going to be a new shelf space. Yeah. So show me over here. 

Go ahead. You lead the way.

We do batch pulling now, so they can pull 20 orders at the same time when they're all small. We're trying to go for efficiency. Yeah. This is the overstock I was talking about.  So when a Ben runs out of a part, I type up the part number and it tells me to go to one of these and I put 50 in and I write that number down over here.

And dude goes and puts that into the computer and they can keep track of how many parts of where and when.  All right. So that's receiving the big trucks pulling back here to the bay door, but wow, this is, this is the deepest depths of Wolfsburg.  

And I'm like your, your bumpers. For example, I'm looking at a pile of bumpers right here.

Keep walking. We'll talk about beautiful uh, triple Chrome dried you're in the USA here in Southern California, as a matter of fact. 

So are you getting, tell me about these, where are you getting these? And who's doing the chroming and all that stuff? Well, the chroming company,  we've gone through a couple  cause we're pretty picky about the Chrome.

And then you're getting raw bumpers from somewhere. We're getting robbed bumpers. We found a company at SEMA that's one manufacturer for other car companies to press our bumpers and then bringing them here and having them chromes. And then the export model ones I was talking about. Well, they come here and then we paint the inside.

We clean them and we assembled them and then ship them off and they're ready to rep they're amazing, great cotton bags to protect them. They ship in a double thick cardboard box. Look at the hat for the money that the customer's paying.  They better be darn well. Nice. And so we try to go that extra mile to protect. 

But it's a good deal because you know that blue machine over there, salt tester. So we'll test our parts to, oh yeah. You can give it a year's worth of a weather in a couple of days or something to that effect. Test how Corose corrosion proofs it is. Yeah.  Yeah. However you say that correctly,  easy for you to say this is how many buffers at a time we buy.

Wow. So how many? Oh, and that's what it looks like. Just raw create like that. We had to take a saws, all the cut it. So I don't know. What is that? An arm span? Six feet by six feet. 

And they're kind of coded in like, so it's just a primer.  Cool.  Awesome.  Well as amazing.  Got a lot of good pictures. Now go back again and do a second one.

Yeah, no, I will. And,  we're heading towards the will-call area now, which I've spent a lot of time in uh, this is only the second time I've been in the warehouse area, which is impressive to say the least. So, um, This is the back of Wilco. Yeah. This is the back of we'll call.

I'll take a picture from this vantage point because I'm sure a lot of people will recognize it from the other way.  Cool. A little displays and authentic stuff from Germany and whatnot and  all kinds of.  Cool parts.  Yeah. The display cases. Thanks.  Just packed full of what looks like both original and reproduce parts. 

Well, speaking of that, this case was supposed to be original part versus a reproduced part. Now  that display case I wasn't aware of that, you know.  All right, cool. So, yeah, usually you'd just come in here and, um, I like to call ahead and put in my order and then just pick it up. Cause it's waiting for me because if you don't. 

You're likely to get behind some guy who you know,  you gonna be stuck in line there right now. It's, it's pretty wide open, but we're getting towards the end of the day on like a Tuesday, I guess it is. Yeah. So I'm being, being you're out. 

That's the way to go. I have, and people like that exchange, you know, uh, you're talking to, and you get into like a diner service, right?

Yeah. 

And you might have some questions that you need answers, right. That me too I'm whenever I'm given the option, like just go online and do it, or you can call this number, you know, I'm a Luddite. 

That night too, but nothing beats talking to a live person, I rented a U-Haul and they wanted me to self-check it in.

I said, I'm just not good to that. Yeah. Right. I don't do it. I don't do that. No. I just got rid of a flip phone a year ago only because they wouldn't service it. That's a fact.  Well, there you go. It's like, that's another thing that got me into Volkswagens. They were old cars just in my life in general. My. 

My wife, everything's older than I am,  but at that out for, you know, that's I tease her about that. She robbed the cradle.  

Yeah. 

Yeah. She scored, but that's what got me into Volkswagens. The boss was counterculture, right. It was not an icon at that point and it was old and, and, and th that just an interested me.

So there's just neat, old stuff. I'm surrounded by just the coolest people, the coolest stuff all day. And I get paid for it. That's lucky. Lucky, lucky I am. 

We'll go out here. We'll go outside the building and I'll grab my part. So now we're standing outside slowing blue sky. Got a huge American flag. I can see uh, Tony's got a newer 86, 86 single cab from Canada,  like 60,000 miles on. 

And I'd rather that came from ISP, Alex, you were talking to, you just interviewed him and that gets a lot of looks. Yeah, that's an interesting, and Alex has a orange double cab just like that, that he drives mostly that I see him in, in the old days when we were much younger, we used to drive our well, first of all, when I lived three miles or a mile from the shop, because that's how many times we moved, it was easy to daily drive my Volkswagen.

So when we moved here, that's when I stopped daily driving and air-cooled Volkswagen every day. 

See, there's a, there's a question I'll have to, we'll have to explore more on the next interview because I had a, you know, a video conference for my day job is, is currently not my day job. And so I again did my work and then I thought, okay, I'm going to go do this interview.

And I went back and forth about whether I should drive my VW because there's kind of this internal dialogue, like,  well, You know, how risky is it? How hot is it out there? No, AC man, I really, I want to enjoy this car. I haven't driven it that often . And what's funny is I was, there was another guy in the parking lot with a VW bug air. Cool. Then older gentlemen and, and I, I walked by and I saw it on my way in, I thought, oh, cool. And on my way out, he was leaving too. And I said, oh, 74. And he went, yeah, 70.  And so I load up my groceries and I'm loading mine and he's driving by and I waved to him and he, he could care less.

He was like, yeah. And I was like, oh, but, but what struck me was, you know, that's his car, you know, that, that is a utilitarian car that he's probably owned since 74. He was of that vintage himself. And you know, so that's the other thing about VWs is, you know, there's still probably  hundreds of thousands of people in this world, Brazil, Mexico, all over the place that really still depend on their trustworthy utilitarian  available Volkswagen did it was supposed to be a car for the masses with parts that will fit other cars.

That's affordable. If I didn't say that already. So Volkswagen is still doing its job. Absolutely. And I think it's the little  pressies about,  that's not the right color.  

 Oh, this is mine. 

Hey, did I take your order? No, you didn't. No, no, you didn't talk to Izzy. I purposely called while you were at lunch.  Hey rich. Thank you so much. That was awesome. Yeah. And um, next time. Okay. Yeah, we'll do it somewhere else. We'll go my house or over beers. Thank you everybody.  

I love that interview because I got to go deep into the warehouse. Most people can kind of see in there from the will call booth, but I'd never been given that kind of access and I got to tour the whole place and see all kinds of history. It was really great. It meant a lot to me.  About the time I was done with the interview and I was gonna exit the warehouse. They had, you know, a gigantic stockpile of boxes that were due to go out on ups and FedEx all over the world. And I have a feeling, you know, depending on the day, they probably do that most days.

And it was an impressive amount of stuff at the bay window or door. I'll tell you that.  Be sure you go to their website wolfsburgwest.com.