Has VW created the perfect car for Baywatch? The Buggy Up! Concept shown at the Frankfurt Auto Show (left, top) looks like a natural for SoCal and the Florida Keys. VW says it took inspiration from the Beetle-based dune buggies of the 1960s and 1970s, which were all knock-offs of the Meyers Manx.

But the Buggy Up! wasn’t the first beach buggy concept based on a production minicar. As soon as I saw the Buggy Up!, it reminded me of a Corgi toy I had as a kid, back about 1970. All I remembered was “Barchetta,” searched on Google and found the 1969 Autobianchi Runabout Barchetta designed by Bertone. Inspired more by speedboats than dune buggies, the little roadster used Fiat 127/128 parts, including its mid-mounted engine. The car was essentially a concept that evolved into the Fiat X1/9 sports car that arrived three years later.

Regardless of its inspiration, the VW Buggy Up! shows that imagination is alive and well in the car biz. Who knows? Maybe the Buggy Up! Concept will lead to a low-price VW roadster that gets 50 mpg.

You don’t often see a classic Mercedes-Benz 300 SL “Gullwing” double-parked in front of line of city boutiques and restaurants, even in Beverly Hills. And it’s probably less likely that there’d be a ’73 Corvette in front of it, and a super-rare 1974 Baldwin-Motion Camaro next to the Vette.

But this wasn’t Beverly Hills. It was Mirdimad Boulevard in Tehran, Iran.

A year ago, automotive PR veteran Marty Schorr introduced me to the Tehran Café Racers group in Iran. It was the first international chapter of an informal car he established in Florida, the Sarasota Café Racers. The group is billed as “car guys who lunch,” and the lunch meetings bring together varied cars and owners.

I ended up writing about the Tehran group for both my own “Wheel People” e-newsletter and more extensively for The New York Times.

Schorr recently replayed the story of the Tehran Café Racers first anniversary luncheon on his Car Guy Chronicles blog.

(Photo by Keyvan Moradi)

Since moving my website from a hosted Wordpress platform to Weebly, I did have to leave all my old blog posts behind. There were a few gems I wanted to continue sharing and will transfer them over. Here's one of my favorites:

Every time I see a 1963 Corvette Sting Ray, whether a car at a show or just a photo, my mind goes back to the spring 1975 school day when my mom took a bullet during a police chase. I was 12 years old.

The Jersey City (NJ) police had chased a stolen car into Bayonne. The woman driving was doing everything possible to evade capture, including driving on the sidewalk. Bayonne cops joined the chase, which became a wild and dangerous procession down Broadway, busy with cars and pedestrians. The cops tried blocking the crazed driver’s path with Cushman parking patrol scooters, which she plowed through, and then a garbage truck, but she got past it. One of more officers started shooting at the car, trying to hit its tires (as the official story would later say).

My mother was standing outside the Rite Aid, when, startled by all the commotion, she felt a sudden stinging in her thigh. A bullet had pierced her purse but stopped at the skin, causing a nasty bruise.

I remember being called to the principle’s office to be told my mom had been shot but was OK, and then getting to leave school early with my younger sister. Walking to school the next day, I saw a few damaged store windows, some piles of auto glass at the curb – and the blown-out right-side window of the white 1963 Corvette I walked past every morning. I remember wondering if they still made replacement windows for the car.

The city reimbursed my mother for a new purse, but she was not able to find one like she had been carrying that day. My older sister had bought it for her on a trip to Spain as an exchange student. Its heavy leather and many internal pockets are what helped stop the bullet.