How to transforming a 1972 Beetle into an off-roading monster
This father and son modify off-road vehicles to be street-legal. They turn a 1972 Volkswagen Beetle into a UTV.
- John Tedesco and his father modified their off-road UTVs into street-legal daily drivers.
- In New Jersey, vehicles 25 years or older only need to have blinkers, lights, and a horn.
- The vehicle has the off-road capabilities of a UTV with the charm of a 1972 Beetle welded on top.
Following is a transcript of the video.
John Tedesco: Hi, I'm John Tedesco.
Dad: And I'm his dad.
John: And we're the creators of the RZR 1972 Volkswagen Super Beetle.
My entire life ever since I was born my dad has always been working on something. In the garage at home, he was always building different cars. So it was pretty hard for me not to just fall in love with it…
People who ask me what this thing is, it depends on who they are. But it's an RZR 1000 with a 1972 Super Beetle on top.
It's actually very highly illegal to drive a UTV on the street where we live. I wanted a Razor my entire life but I couldn't wrap my head around spending that much money on a vehicle I could only drive off-road.
The only way to drive a UTV on the street is to turn it into something else.
Did you think it was gonna work or not gonna work? (asking his dad)
Dad: We knew it was gonna work, it's just how was it going to look, how is it going to fit on there.
John: So the first step is to buy a razor, take it completely apart with the plastics so you're down to the bare frame and the roll bars.
Then you have to invest in a Beetle. The reason we chose a 1972 Beetle is that in New Jersey, vehicles that are 25 years or older don't need to go through inspection. So the loophole that lets you drive a UTV on the road is registering the vehicle using the VIN of an older vehicle.
So we found it in Toms River, at a small automotive shop. The bug was under like 6 inches of water.
Dad: Mice too. Mice love these bugs. They're mice always in them.
John: Luckily we got a good deal and also the water helped cause we were kicking it around trying to get a better deal for it.
And then you just go to town on it with the Sawzall, just cut it all apart. The more you cut the better it's going to be.
John: So we got it mounted to the razor and then it was more of the cosmetic stuff. So we went on eBay and got 18 wheeler fenders, put cardboard cutouts to measure it, then we cut up the 18 wheeler fenders, welded those onto the body.
Dad: We tacked them on and then bent them to the look. You know he comes up with the look and then goes, "oh you gotta make it like that" and then I go, "I'm not doing that" and then you look at it and you're like "ah shit, he's right again."
John: The metal of the bug is so thin that we were having trouble welding it because we would burn right through.
We put a stock super ATV bumper and we riveted it to the hood of the bug so it's tight and it also connects to the 18 wheeler fenders we created.
Dad: There are no rules to this stuff you just try to figure out and try something else.
John: Me and my dad aren't professional mechanics, we are just two average people that have a pretty good idea around cars. And we just kept on cutting things off. We would weld it if we didn't like it, we'd cut it off, weld it. It was definitely a team effort.
After the metalwork, we sand it all down. We put door glass in any cracks to smooth it all out. Then we primed it and used a Bedliner on it. It's called raptor liner and you can choose the color you want. We went for a pretty obnoxious color cause we want people to know we're going down the street and the trails.
And then it's just little cosmetic details to give it character. We did light bars, central switches, LED rock lights. To make it street legal you need to have a street-legal kit on it. So a horn, lights, and turn signals.
To do the build process took us about 6 months. The entire time me and my dad were like, "I don't know if we're gonna be able to do this." The motivation was not there! Some days were really good. Some days we were like, "maybe we might want to just cut it off and make it back into a Razor."
John: We built this thing to ride so I'm not gonna say we drive it gentle. We beat it pretty good.
We've driven it in over a foot of snow ripping around. We've driven it in the sand, we've driven it in mud and mud holes, we've driven it in a flood, we've driven on pavement. You can do literally everything besides fly.
You can tell it's very much for off-road. A lot of the weight is in the rear so when you hit it you kind of feel like you are doing a wheelie.
Dad: Plus you can be going down the street and see the woods and go WOOP! You hang a right and go right into it! And then you come right back out onto the road… it's crazy.
John: It's crazy how well these things handle off-road and how fast they go. You can go over whoops and bumps and things that you normally kind of clench at because you think it's gonna hurt, and then it's like a cloud, nothing.
So a stock Razor is just a little over 1,200 lbs. On our local truck scale, we got 1,800 lbs. Most of that is probably from the tires. On the highway, I got up to 75 mph and on the trails most of the time we are driving around 40 or 50 mph.
I posted a video that got 100,000 views, I posted another video about the build process, and went to bed. When I woke up it had over a million views!
It's gotten to a certain point now where we have to stop on the trail because people jump in front of it and wave us down. We feel like celebrities but we're very much not celebrities.
We want to keep on building them. So after nine, my dad caught the bug of it, no pun intended. He created his own. And then I want to create another one.
John: How do you feel this turned out? (to dad)
Dad: Pretty good.
John: That's a terrible response! (laughs) Give something good.
John: I think we are both very pleasantly surprised how it turned out. We did not think we were going to get the result that we did.