Plse read this story, about BBT customer Tom and “HIS” beetle…its amazing, if You want to find out more, You can order the book below!
The dark-blue beetle in which journalist Tom Dieusaert crossed the South American continent, a feat which gave rise to the book The Beetle Diarie (English version, 2014), is now riding around in Belgium. A well-deserved retirement and hopefully a definitive break from custom agents and border bureaucrats.
To close the gap between Mexico City and Buenos Aires, that was the challenge of Tom Dieusaert, back in September 2003 when he started out of a half-year long journey through Latin America, with a genuine interest in the local customs and history of all 13 countries he travelled. A lot of exciting and sometimes scary experiences, which later became part of the bestseller The Beetle Diarie.
The main obstacle of the trip was not caused by the quality of the roads – most of the so-called Panamericana is paved – or the presence of Central American criminal gangs and Colombian guerrilla’s but the negative attitude of migration and custom officials at the border crossings.
In Honduras, the author even was arrested for crossing the border illegally. In spite of sharing the same language and history, Latin America is still a divided continent: In Argentina, the dapper Mexican bug could not obtain an Argentinian license plate, and could only stay temporarily on a “tourist visa”.
Since the author was not planning to dump car in a scrapyard, he decided to cross the borders on a regular basis. The last time was in 2014 in Brazil, a country where the beetle (or fusca) is very popular. Although production of the carro do povo (the people’s car) has stopped definitively in 1996, a genuine underground beetle auto parts universe still thrives in Brazil. So the blue beetle underwent a body and paint job in Rio de Janeiro. It took some Brazilian time – namely 10 months – but the result was excellent.
Then the car was shipped on a ro-ro boat towards Zeebruges and imported by Jan Hendrickx who had imported other Mexican beetles in the past. The car had to pass through technical inspection before being able to be registered in Belgium. The good news was that because of its age – 25 years on the spot – the beetle was now officially an old-timer and exempt from smog control. The bad news was that the beetle, because of a Belgian bureaucratic mess-up, had to be registered 2 times in a row and pay the corresponding fees!
Luckily now, the beetle does not have to go through any technical controls anymore and the new owner, Arthur Coppieters (who is the nephew of the author) rides around Belgium now, free as bird. When you see it pass by: Flash your lights since this Blue Belgian Beetle (O-AYE 465) is a true classic.
The complete adventures are written in a book, (Tom is an author after all!) and this book is very very interesting, this book can be obtained in no less as three languages! and You can order here below!
The Beetle Diaries is available on print with Amazon and in Kindle Version (Click LINKS)
Diarios del Vocho (español) se consigue en Amazon o en Epub.
De Laatste Rit van de Kever (De Scriptomanen) bestaat zowel in PRINTVERSIE (€ 22,5) als in E-BOOK (€ 9,99)