Funfest celebrates 53 years of Herbie

Jun. 19—EFFINGHAM — Members of the Volkswagen community united at Mid America Motorworks in Effingham over the weekend for a celebration of 53 years of the "Love Bug" Herbie.

"We have good weather, a good crowd and a lot of cars," Mike Yager of Mid America Motorworks said. "We're way ahead of last year in people, activities and sales, so it's thumbs up on our end."

This year's VW Funfest had a movie theme tied to the famed VW Beetle No. 53.

"The last Herbie movie made was 'Herbie: Fully Loaded' and we worked with Disney on that," said Yager. "We supplied all of the parts for the 28 different vehicles in the movie."

Yager said when Disney used the parts in the movie, the company didn't have to pay for them.

"They took tents from us, boxes, parts with our logo on it and banners," said Yager. "It was a NASCAR-based movie and they had NASCAR pits. If you look in the background, you could see the Mid America banner and our logo was on tool boxes. We had 18 placements in the movie."

Yager said if Mid America would have had to pay for placing the banners and logo in the movie it would have cost the company millions of dollars. However, since he supplied all of the parts needed for the cars, the company didn't have to pay the high cost of having the logos and banners placed in the movie.

"We did such a great job getting parts to them ahead of schedule, Disney gave us one of the cars from the movie," Yager said.

Disney also gave one of the original scripts and some of the apparel the actors wore in the movie.

On Saturday afternoon, the showbiz model Herbie made its way to the show field to hang out with the other Herbies attending the event.

Corey Seibert of Vinton, Iowa, became a fan of Herbie when he was growing up. Seibert had his 1970 VW Beetle NASCAR Herbie that he built on display Saturday.

"My brother took me to see 'The Love Bug' in 1969 when it came out in a white Volkswagen when I was 8 years old. We parked it right in front of the Plaza Theater in Cedar Rapids, Iowa," Seibert recalled. "We had a mob around the car when we came out. I just always wanted to build a Herbie. I was hooked then. I thought this car draws a crowd."

He took his NASCAR Herbie to a four-day event celebrating the car's 53rd birthday in April at Daytona International Raceway in Florida.

"We got to make laps with 53 other Herbies at Daytona," he said. "What better way to celebrate 53 years than to have my NASCAR Herbie running around a NASCAR race track."

Wendell and Jinni Redmond brought their Herbie to Effingham from Knoxville, Tennessee.

"We've had it since October," Jinni Redmond said. "It didn't look that good when we bought it. We put a rag top in and we 'Herbied' it."

"We had to put in a new gas tank, fuel line and clutch," Wendell Redmond said.

They took the engine out twice to repair it and worked on the car four months to get it show ready, which included new upholstry.

Pam Burgess of Pontiac upholstered her 1972 Herbie VW Beetle, while her husband, Mike, restored the outside of the car.

"We built it in 2018," Mike Burgess said. "It took us 16 months to build. I built it for her. We did 95% of the restoration ourselves."

"It's something fun and the kids like it," Pam Burgess of her Herbie on display at Funfest.

Yager noted the VW Funfest draws a little different crowd than Mid America's Corvette Funfest, which will be in September.

"The Volkswagen is a large vehicle obviously and by and large it's a younger crowd," Yager said, adding the event draws more families and dogs. "At Corvette, if you see children, they are usually grandchildren."

Volkswagen enthusiast Justin VanBooven of Portland, Missouri, brought to Funfest what he calls a highly modified 1972 VW Beetle, along with his son, Carson, and his modified go-kart that looks like a VW Beetle.

"I started out with Dune Buggies then I started in with the Beetles," Justin VanBooven said.

It took him 13 years to build the modified 1972 Beetle and he finished it just before last year's Funfest.

"I built this myself. So, it kind of got pushed to the side several times. It's fun to drive. It gets a lot of looks that's for sure," VanBooven said.

Carson kept busy Saturday driving his new VW friends around the grounds of Mid America Motorworks in his mini VW Beetle.

"The fiberglass body came from an old carousal and we modified the go-kart body to go in it," Justin VanBooven said.

It was fitting on Father's Day weekend for Doug Mills of Evansville to have his restored VW at Funfest. His father found a beat-up Volkswagen in the Indianapolis area and called Doug to see if he wanted it. Four hundred dollars later Doug had a 1972 VW Beetle to restore.

"It started out as a $400 piece of junk," Mills said. "It was complete trash. I couldn't afford a Corvette so this is the way I decided to go."

Mills had his restored VW Beetle decked out Saturday with retro luggage and ice chest, along with an old pair of water skis.

Mills is a member of a group of Volkswagen enthusiasts called the Southern Indiana Volks Force. Several members were sitting under a tent at Funfest Saturday morning.

"A lot of us have been coming to this event for a number of years," said Mills.

Dave Snapp of Brazil, Indiana, said his fully custom 1966 VW Bus was a barn find. It was originally a VW Camper he found in Dugger, Indiana.

"There is hardly anything stock about it," Snapp said. "The pop tent on top is the only part of the original camping gear equipment we kept. It sat for about 15 years and not too much left of the camping part of it to bring it back to original, so we opted to go custom on this one."

He has a 1965 VW Beetle at home and always wanted a VW Bus with split windows.

"I was really excited to get it," said Snapp.

Snapp had a special tent display with his vehicle and a miniature model of it sitting in front. The Volkswagen Bus was featured in VolksAmerica magazine.

Snapp said he loves coming to VW Funfest in Effingham.

"The best part about coming to these is talking to folks," he said. "Everybody has a story."

Charles Mills can be reached at charles.mills@effinghamdailynews.com or by phone at 618-510-9226 or 217-347-7151 ext. 300126.