At a Chicago traffic light last week, a motorist glanced at the car alongside and gasped to a friend: "Hey, the rear end of that Rolls is a Volkswagen!" Well, almost. What the Chicagoan saw —and what more and more drivers and pedestrians across the U.S. are encountering—is a VW equipped with a fiberglass hood that bears a startling resemblance to the elegant Rolls-Royce front. It is the latest—and most eye-catching —manifestation of the doll-up-the-Bug fad that has produced a dizzying variety of conversions over the years since the Beetles first appeared in the U.S.
Some 3,000 of the Rolls hoods have been supplied by Brooklyn's PVT Plastics, which introduced them at Manhattan's International Automobile Show last year, and retails them through VW dealers for $225 to $300 apiece. According to PVT Executive Ray Marino, the concept originated with a company engineer who disliked the front of his VW. PVT also offers other Rolls-Royced accessories for the VW, including bumpers and a "Continentalized" rear deck. "There's no end to what we can do," Marino boasts.
Chicago Adman Jack Kauffman, whose Pacesetter Industries also produces a Rolls-type nose for the Bug, has sold about 500 units so far for about $250 each, primarily through Midwest VW dealers. Kauffman carefully avoids identifying the new nose with the Rolls-Royce, calling it a "classic" hood, instead. But his customers have no such qualms.
"That extra $245 adds a million dollars worth of class," reports Clarence Page, 25, a Chicago Tribune reporter. "You drive around feeling like a homecoming-queen candidate. It's an incredible phenomenon." Joe Troiani, 23, a Chicago social worker, fondly recalls the night he parked his Royced VW in front of Playboy Publisher Hugh Hefner's North Side mansion. When he and his date returned, a crowd had gathered to admire his car. "Nobody," says Troiani, "was paying attention to Hefner's big Mercedes limo."
The phony Rolls hood is attracting attention elsewhere: the executive offices of Rolls-Royce of America. "Our attitude," says a company spokesman, "is one of total contempt. The Rolls hood on a VW is like a giant's robe on the wizened body of a dwarf."