Thursday, Feb. 4, 1999

Mechanic caught Beetle bug early

Now local man devotes his life to restoring VWs

   "You gotta meet this guy."
   Not an original pitch, mind you, but in the end it worked.
   I had been talking to a Volkswagen Beetle owner who was telling me how he and all his sons own vintage air-cooled models and wouldn't be caught dead driving any other kind of vehicle. And then the name of Thomas Weilbacher came up.
   "Really? What makes him so special?" I asked.
   "Not only does he own several Beetle classics," I was told, "that's all he works on all day long for a living. He's a guy you want to talk to."
   A few days later I was knocking on Weilbacher's door. A royal blue dune buggy was parked on his front curb and a glossy orange Beetle convertible sat in his garage.
   "I'm not a big talker about this," the 30-year-old mechanic said when asked about his VW enthusiasm.
   It started at age 12 when he was big on skating and surfing. "At that time all surfers had a Baja Bug or a VW van," he said. "All my friends had one."
   He didn't get a Bug of his own until the ripe old age of 16.
   As his "just for kicks" hobby grew, Weilbacher didn't know it would one day pay the bills. However, hints of what was to come came early. Whenever a Bug chugged its last mile out on the beach, his pals went to him to resuscitate their wheels, he said.
   "They would come to me as if I knew anything about fixing them. When in fact I was learning as I went along. I didn't always fix them, but I tried."
   

Bug beats out competition

   Weilbacher's beauty is the one in his garage - the convertible he restored. But the vehicle he uses for work and play is the royal blue flying beach dune buggy he built from scratch two years ago.
   Weilbacher, who describes himself as a "day-to-day person," said he started out with a desire for a buggy but was clueless as to what the end product would be. True to his nature, he began cutting and welding, "never putting a single thing on paper" beforehand.
   That creation would bring Weilbacher a victory in a recent tough truck competition sideshow. "They opened it up to any street-legal vehicle. So I asked, `Does it have to be a truck?' `As long as it's street legal,' they said. So I showed up with my buggy. I torpedoed them."
   

Nothing but Bugs

   So intoxicating was the thrill of competition that Weilbacher, president of the South Texas VW Club, is now recruiting participants for a monster truck sideshow for dune buggies and Bugs. Fourteen already have signed up for the event, tentatively scheduled for March 5-7 at the Corpus Christi Speedway.
   At Dale's Import Service and Volkswagen World, where he has been a mechanic for six years, Weilbacher spends his time working on Bug headliners, building engines or installing transmissions. At home, his bedroom is wall-to-wall Bug memorabilia. Back issues of his favorite VW magazine line his closet, and show trophies he has won for his Bug creations stand near his bed.
   "My mom tried to persuade me into getting a Chevy when I was 16," Weilbacher said. "But it didn't work. I wouldn't do it."
    Sylvia R. Longoria can be reached at 886-3718 or by e-mail at longorias@caller.com