My Favorite Ride: The continuing, never-ending, story of a 1973 Volkswagen Thing

1973 Volkswagen Thing.

Part III.

Really.

Just when I figured I was done writing about a certain 1973 Volkswagen — two columns should be enough, right? — I get a call from Morris Richardson. "My Uncle Jim built that Volkswagen Thing," he said. I called him back.

Richardson worked 29 years at Newt's Marathon, a now-gone gas station/automotive repair shop everyone in Bloomington knew as "Newt's." He was still in high school when he started out, and came back after graduating from automotive repair school.

Catch up on the Thing:What in the world is that Thing?

Newt's was the place to go for an honest mechanic, fair prices and guaranteed results. Customers ranged from factory workers driving affordable Fords to Indiana University professors with upscale automobiles parked in Elm Heights garages. Everyone got the same reliable service at Newt's.

Richard "Newt" Chitwood sold the station and retired in 2008 after being in business since 1966. He died last year.

Richardson recalled a day back in the 1980s. He was working at the station at 17th and Madison streets when his uncle, Jim Richardson, who also worked at Newt's, came in and asked to borrow his nephew and a wrecker for a few hours.

Whose Thing was it?:The top down and Tom Petty and the B52s playing on the 8-track

"He said he needed to go out to Unionville and pick up a car he'd bought, so we took the wrecker out to get it. When I asked him what kind of car, he said 'a Volkswagen Thing,' and all I could think was what in the world did he want with one of those. But, he loved Volkswagens."

His uncle would buy a college student's rusted-out VW, cut the body off, shorten the chassis, weld on two roll bars and build dune-buggy-type vehicles they would ride like four-wheelers on the family's 270-acre farm.

When they got to Unionville to retrieve the Thing, more than three decades ago, Richardson was shocked by the vehicle's poor condition. The top was gone, the floorboards were rusted through, the body was in terrible shape. The seats were rotted. It didn't run, and the prospect of it ever doing so seemed so unlikely.

Richardson towed the heap back to Newt's Marathon and left it behind the building. The next morning, he arrived at work to find his uncle already there. "He had that Thing torn apart. The tires were off, the brakes were off, he had the motor out of it, everything," Richardson said. "I pretty much knew then he would get it to run, and by noon he had the motor back in and it started up."

Over the next few days, his uncle replaced the brakes, installed new metal floorboards and did some welding work to create a new body. It needed taillights, and they found a set at a junkyard from a 1964 Chevrolet that worked fine.

"Then he painted it that canary yellow and put those Crager wheels on it," Richardson said. "The front seats are out of a Renault, he got them out of a junkyard, and the backseat is out of that Renault, too. He had to cut it down to make it fit. He bought a new top, and put it on. He loved it."

After that, Richardson and his Uncle Jim took to the roads in the re-made vehicle. They drove it off road as well. He confessed the two would sometimes, after a few drinks, drive it down some old railroad tracks out past Ellettsville. He was reluctant to say more, other than the Thing "would fit right there on the tracks." A pause. "We had a lot of fun."

He said he doesn't read the newspaper much, but saw the My Favorite Ride column about the Owens family who owned the Thing in the 1990s. They had traded it for an Oldsmobile Bravada at Royal Chevrolet in Bloomington.

He remembers the Owenses. "He and his wife traded at the station, and he always commented on how much he liked the Thing. I think one day he made my uncle an offer he couldn't refuse, and he sold it to him."

The first column I wrote about the vehicle focused of how Royal Chevrolet had kept the vehicle since it had been traded in, and that the previous owners were unknown. One clue was a mechanic's sticker from Newt's Marathon on the frame, indicating the VW had once been serviced there.

His Uncle Jim is still refurbishing cars. "He's built numerous vehicles since then," Richardson said. I'm pretty sure their railroad track driving days are over. Right, Morris?

Next week's column will not be about this, or any other, Volkswagen Thing. I promise.

Have a story to tell about a car or truck? Contact My Favorite Ride reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5867.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Unravelling the mystery of a cobbled together Volkswagen Thing