A Company Is Giving VW Baja Bugs The Singer Treatment And I’m 100% Here For It

Generally, I’m not terribly interested in really expensive, high-status cars. They’re just too inaccessible and beyond the scope and grasp of anything in my normal reality. It’s not just all that money that I’m unburdened with; I just don’t know what I’d do with a 1,200 hp sleek, finicky and fragile beast with doors that open like an origami Fabergé egg and an interior slathered in more Alcantra than the great Alcant breeding fields of the Levant. But there’s a whole other category of really expensive, high-status cars that, despite my deeply-felt principles, I find myself drawn to: the fancy restomods.

You know the kind of thing I’m talking about: cars like those “reimagined” Porsche 911s that Singer lovingly crafts, or, even closer to what I’m thinking about, when more lowbrow cars get the highbrow treatment, like the Icon “derelict” series, where rough-looking cars are secretly meticulously-crafted machines with modern mechanicals and electronics hiding under that archaic exterior. Icon has been doing this with some old pickup trucks recently, too, which are pretty close to what I mean: familiar, even iconic old, accessible cars, just made to standards and quality far beyond what they originally were.

Now Twisted, a Yorkshire-based company that usually does the restomod treatment to Land Rover Defenders, is starting to build some cars that are so far up my alley I’m going to ask them to take the recycling out: restomodded Baja Bugs.

These Baja Bugs look pretty much exactly like the ones I remember from my misspent youth; they’re the more common “close eye” style, with close-set headlights and cut-away fenders all around, and a very exposed engine at the back. These were the sorts of cars that were routinely built in people’s backyards from a cheap, usually accident-damaged Beetle, the supply of which seemed infinite back in the 1970s and 1980s.

These Baja-type bugs were so common that VW themselves included one in an official ad, showcasing the durability of the Beetle by noting that so many ended up having second lives as off-road racers and fun cars, after years of family car service:

That one up there didn’t have the most common close-eye kit, but it’s still a Baja Bug. The close-eye Baja Bug fiberglass kit usually consisted of a front end, a rear cowl to go over the engine, and lots of instructions for what parts of the body to cut off. These were really common back in the day, not just for off-roading and racing – though they did plenty of that – but also just as daily drivers.

Crispin Glover’s character in the 1986 movie River’s Edge (see below) drove one, and my wife’s first car was one, even.

The ones Twisted is making sure look like the original Baja Bugs that were hand-crafted in backyards by sweaty people at lest five Pabst Blue Ribbons in, but (I suspect, based on these pictures) are built to vastly higher quality tolerances.

In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that these are very likely the absolute highest-quality Baja Bugs ever built to be sold to the general public, and that’s sort of an amazing notion to me.

Here’s what Twisted has to say about the cars they’re calling TBugs:

Each TBug begins with a carefully selected air-cooled Beetle from the ’60s to ’80s. But that’s where any resemblance to a restoration project ends.

We strip everything back to first principles. Long-travel suspension systems are fitted to soak up punishment on any terrain. Oversized BFG tires provide the grip. And the iconic Baja-inspired bodywork is as functional as it is distinctive, vital to the reimagined story of desert rebellion.

Under the engine cover, we’ve doubled the power output – though we’ve deliberately kept it under 80 horsepower. Why? Because the TBug isn’t about raw numbers.

So, a few interesting things here: These are built on actual VW pans, so registering them should be nice and easy, and, if you get one old enough, would likely be exempt from smog restrictions in many states. That is, if they export them from the UK, which I suspect they do? They should.

It looks like an original VW torsion-beam axle is used up front, though likely a new one built for the off-road racing world. The engine is what interests me especially – Twisted only notes they make less than 80 hp, which for a VW flat-four is no joke. I’d like to know more about how they’re getting in the ballpark of 80 hp; there’s a number of ways to do it, of course, like increasing displacement from the expected 1584cc (1776cc engines are common, and usually make about 75 or so hp), and the use of headers and bigger carbs and new cams, etc. are all tried and true methods.

These look like really lovely restomods, and I like that they haven’t gone overboard on the modernization; the seem to have updated the lighting (though they mostly keep the look the same, like those tiny pre-’62 taillights on one example they show) but for the most part this just seems to be a build that’s very focused on high-quality everything.

In the samples pictures, one looks like it was based on an early ’70s Beetle (larger windows, air extraction vent behind the rear quarter window, which came in ’71) and the green one looks like a pre-’65 Beetle with its smaller windows.

The seats do seem vastly better than any original Baja I’ve ever seen, which almost always used old t-shirts for the seat covers.

The company says no two TBugs will be the same, and that’s both fun and also a reminder of how expensive these things will likely be. No price has been mentioned just yet, but I think it’s safe to say this could be something in the high five to six figures? Something like that. Something I can’t afford. I should have bought one of these in 1989 for $700 when I had the chance.

Oh well. These do look amazing, though, and if I ever sell all three of my kidneys, I’d love to pick one up.