Wasn't there something else?
As I wrote in my blog after Pentecost 2026, I attended a parts market and meeting for US cars from the 1930s to 1960s in Mellingen on Pentecost Sunday. There were various stands selling used parts, clothes and other items in more or less good condition. I usually look for models on such occasions, and more rarely for cool accessories for my cars. However, the Coke coolers on offer were too weathered and too expensive for me.
Sometimes things catch my eye, even if I have no interest in them. On this occasion, this was a complete VW drivetrain including exhaust with a single tailpipe and a barrel-shaped air filter on the carburetor - apparently an original from a VW Pretzel Beetle. A few steps later, however, a Ford V8 Panelvan caught my attention.
Engine in an early Beetle, the air filter with dry insert has a barrel shape, followed later by mushroom-shaped oil bath filters.
Well, since I neither own a Volkswagen from that era nor had any need for such an engine, I filed that visual appeal away somewhere in my brain and moved on. After various encounters, a few drinks - consisting 100 percent of a sticky lemonade and therefore non-alcoholic - and slowly developing sunburn, I got into my car towards evening and drove home.
1952 standard pretzel (with folding sunroof!)
Then, a few days later, my good friend Claude Schaub from bugbus.net got in touch and said that the engine of his 1952 VW Standard Pretzel had now been consigned to the eternal hunting grounds. The extent of the damage is unclear to me. But for someone who changes alternators in the hard shoulder and replaces the clutch of his T1 VW bus at home in the middle of Zurich on the sidewalk (in Germany this is called a sidewalk), the message that it has "blown" his engine seems to me to have a certain significance.
Repair on the sidewalk in the middle of Zurich.
So now we have to find out who supplied the engine in question. The place was Mellingen, the time Pentecost, the accompanying circumstances a Ford V8 panel van parked near the stand in question. Anyone with relevant information is welcome to get in touch!
However, I will once again consider whether it would not be advisable to carry a notebook with me on such occasions. Or a folder with business cards. You should probably make a note of all objects of interest or secure a card from the provider. Well, sometimes a hall plan with a list of exhibitors helps at a professionally organized trade fair. But especially at the small backyard and meadow markets - where there are still real discoveries to be made, or even scary junk - such things are a pious wish. It's a lesson for me.
And it seems to be Murphy's Law that things always break AFTER an event. Or is it BEFORE such an event? Because the 52 pretzel would have been intended for a visit to Europe's largest vintage Volkswagen meeting in Hessisch Oldendorf, themeeting from June 25 to 28 - HO26, the 9th International Vintage Volkswagen Show.
