* Only the side windows could be replaced by plexiglass. *The cars should keep all the original steel panels and no cuts on the body were allowed, other than the one on the rear skirt to make room for the exhaust system and the other one on the front to make room for an additional oil cooler. In 1985 the “Speed 1600″ was born and the regulations were very strict: Garrafa was one of the biggest Speed 1600 enthusiasts Pedro “Garrafa” going flat out at Interlagos race track, on a rainy day. This new category should be exactly the opposite, to make it affordable, the cars should be as close as possible to a stock VW Beetle. The “Atomic Pottys” were a crowd-pleaser, everybody loved to see the little Beetles giving a hard time to bigger cars, but they also were unpredictable on the track, mechanically unreliable, and very expensive to build.
#VW BEETLE CIRCUIT RACER DRIVER#
Those cars were not cheap to build but a well-balanced “Potty” in the hands of a seasoned driver would be a pain in the neck to the way more powerful Chevy Opalas and Ford Mavericks. Thanks to the oil crisis of the 70s, Division 3 had a very short life, and 1980 was its last season. Those little monsters were adored by the fans and they affectionately called the cars “Atomic Potty”. There, the teams had the freedom to extract the last drop of power from the air-cooled engines and to transform the Beetle with a fiberglass body kit, extra wide rims wrapped with slick tires, and 5-speed Hewland transmission. The last time the VW Beetle was officially racing was in the 1970s, in the extinct “Division 3”, a category reserved for highly modified production cars. Marazzi’s work inspired a whole bunch of people to start writing about cars, including myself. The guy on the right, in the racing suit, is Expedito Marazzi, a brilliant automotive journalist and an accomplished race driver who also drove the VW Beetle on the “Division 3”.
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