New electric ID.Buzz joins historic Volkswagen lineup in Philly exhibit

Step aside, Stutz. Make way, Aston Martin. It’s time for the People’s Car at the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum.

The Volkswagens put-putted in — and buzzed in, in one case — last week to rub fenders in an unusual exhibit among Philly’s finest and fastest historic racing sports cars. And the people followed.

Das Museumsprogramm: Past, Present and Future is cosponsored by Volkswagen of America and runs through Jan. 12, in part to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the brand in the States, and the arrival of the long-awaited Microbus-inspired, electric-powered ID.Buzz minivan to the Philadelphia market this fall.

Notable historic offerings on display include a 1949 Beetle, the first model of the air-cooled compact car that started it all; a 1967 21-window Bus; and the celebrated 1984 GTI sporty hatch. And they are all perfectly welcome at the Simeone, that started off being a home to founder Frederick Simeone’s racing sports car collection.

“We’re a museum that has cars that are like, well, Mona Lisas is the common term,” curator Kevin Kelly said. “A lot of these cars are just so special and so historic, and it would be very easy to be a car snob around here. But we’re all car guys that work in this place and have our own cars, and we don’t all have GT40s and Jaguars in our garages.”

The exhibit is part of a regular series of rotating exhibits the museum puts on four times a year in its 2-acre Southwest Philly location. But this one drew more than 500 people to its opening, which is “huge for this kind of event,” said William Murphy, the museum’s director of digital strategy.

The gathering of the 30 Volkswagen models, culled from more than 100 submissions, was the brainchild of Simeone employee Guston Lowe, a self-described Volkswagen nut.

“We wanted to go chronically, touch on a little bit of every thing,” Lowe said. “Volkswagen has done a lot of cool cars for a long, long time.”

“We thought it was important to showcase some of the oldest stuff possible as well as the new that’s coming up soon,” Lowe added. He pointed to the Microbus a.k.a the Hippie Bus, original GTIs, and a mix of stock and modified vehicles.

In keeping with Simeone’s racing history, though, exhibits include several racing models, like the 1960 Formula Vee.

But the early Volkswagens were a far cry from racers. The compact, economical fish out of water Type 1, which became known as the Beetle, made its way to U.S. shores in 1949, among ever-larger and more ostentatious gas-guzzling Detroit-built vehicles.

Success came slowly, as the Beetle adapted over the years with more “creature comforts” — like turn signal lights (1956), a gas gauge (1962), and two-speed windshield wipers (1967). But the recognizable putt-putt of the air-cooled engine rumbling in the rear and durability and quirkiness of the car drew in a huge following. The Type 2 (Bus or Microbus) debuted in 1950.

The brand expanded to include an air-cooled hatchback, wagon, and sporty Karmann Ghia in the 1950s and ‘60s, but none of those matched the following of the Bug and the Bus, which disappeared in the early ‘70s, as the company switched over to front-engine, water-cooled vehicles.

Pollution and safety regulations finally killed the ancient Beetle design in the U.S. in 1979, but by then over 21 million cars were sold. It rumbled on in other parts of the world until 2003.

Volkswagen revived the Beetle name on a modern front-wheel-drive, water-cooled version in 1998, but it met its end in 2019. Talk of a Bus replacement has always swirled, and start dates for the ID. Buzz have been pushed back again and again. (None of Volkswagen’s three minivan offerings since, the Vanagon, Eurovan, and Chrysler-built Routan, has a spot in the exhibit; nor does any of the recent Beetle incarnations.)

Normally, the Simeone Museum is more Bugatti than Bug. It was built by Simeone, a Philadelphia neurosurgeon with a penchant for historic vehicles. He opened the museum from his own collection upon his retirement from practice in 2008.

“Dr. Simeone was really focused really on specific cars that competed at the top level,” Kelly said. “But all the cars are an essential part of the story” of sports car racing.

A list of makes in the permanent collection reads like a middle verse of “The 12 Days of Christmas” racing sports car edition: Five Ferraris, four Stutzes, three Auburns, two Aston Martins, and a Cord 812 Supercharged.

A 1970 Plymouth Superbird and Corvettes from 1963 and 1966 are among the most mainstream of the 75-car permanent collection.

Four of the cars for the exhibit are on loan from Volkswagen — the 1949, the 21-window Bus, the GTI, and the ID. Buzz — but the rest are owner submissions, and run the gamut.

The exhibit includes some more mundane VWs, like the 1963 Volkswagen Type 3 Notchback, 1981 Rabbit Pickup, and 2003 Jetta TDI Wagon, as well as standouts like a 1958 Beetle and Panel Bus, a 1971 Super Beetle Convertible, and a 2004 R32.

Lancaster, Pa. resident Becca Moore’s 1995 Corrado convertible is mostly original but with plenty of added customizations, including a different front end, wheels, and convertible top. She said her car, which she’s owned for over 10 years and which she’s restored almost entirely herself, was solicited by Lowe for submission.

“I built it for what I wanted and what I liked, and I drive it a whole lot, but I also do take it to mainly Volkswagen shows,” said Moore, 41, who owns 10 cars.

The 1958 Panel Bus is more than just a bus; it’s an original King Heating Service vehicle, from an HVAC company that was located at 48th and Woodland in West Philly, according to owner Gibbs Connors of West Mt. Airy.

“That’s the significance of this car: that it’s an original Philadelphia Bus,” Connors said. “There’s something like a 2-3% survival rate with old Volkswagens in general.”

The museum sees as many as 300 visitors when it holds demonstration days, where museum staff will talk about one of the vehicles and then take them outside to tool around the parking lot. Thirty or so people pass through on a normal weekday, Kelly said; double that on weekends; and maybe 1,000 people a week show up during the holidays.

So the 500-plus this weekend makes the exhibit a hit.

“We feel that every car has a story,” Kelly said. “Racing sports cars, they have a very specific story, but every car has a following, every car is loved by somebody, and every car has a personal story for someone.”