The Wild VW Beetle Paul Newman Turned Into a Muscle Car
The actor's humble VW ragtop got a Ford V-8 heart, creating one of the wildest Beetles ever built.
[This story originally appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of MotorTrend Classic.] Nobody knows exactly when and where iconic actor/director/soon-to-be-racer Paul Newman first met San Diego-area Indy car builder Jerry Eisert. Speculation is that their first meeting took place sometime in 1969 at Ontario Motor Speedway, where Newman hung out a lot while he prepared to film Once Upon a Wheel, a documentary about the people of motorsport.
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Newman was self-admittedly addicted to sleeper cars. He had been upgrading his humble VWs with Porsche engines and brakes since the early 1960s. It probably didn’t take too many Budweisers to convince Newman and Eisert that putting a Ford V-8 engine in the middle of a VW ragtop was a good idea, and that Eisert was just the man for the job. It’s believed this screaming-red rocket was stock, already owned by Newman when he turned it over to Eisert for a more than substantial reengineering job that replaced the bug’s humble 40-horse four with a Ford 351-cubic-inch Windsor V-8 and a Ford GT40 spec ZF five-speed transaxle.
Eisert deduced that the only way to make it work without turning the car into a tail-heavy, evil-handling monster was a true, race-car-inspired amidships installation. He put the engine way ahead of the rear axle line, or about where the rear seat was on the VW, and the engine radiator well up front to balance out the weight distribution. This also left room for a proper transaxle to be mounted behind the engine. The relatively new, all-iron Ford 351 Windsor V-8 had a factory rating of 300 horsepower in four-barrel carbureted form, judged more than enough for the relative flyweight Beetle, so it was left stock. The German ZF five-speed transaxle is a tough unit incorporating a limited-slip differential and had proved itself in the Ford GT40 racers and Ford V-8-powered De Tomaso Mangusta. Eisert’s biggest challenges were cooling, and creating enough chassis rigidity so the car wouldn’t twist itself into the shape of a pretzel. The stock engine and transmission were removed, and much of the rear floorpan was cut away to make room for the new motive force.
Eisert used boxed-steel tubing to creative a subframe of sorts, plus a conventional rollbar to add chassis stiffness and a measure of safety. The new steel members run the perimeter of the passenger compartment from the rear of the cabin to the front, meaning you have to climb over them to get into the short bucket seats.
The purpose-built radiator is fed by two triangle-shaped holes cut into the lower portion of the front trunk panel. Specially fabbed grilles add a finished look to this modification. The exhaust system is simple, yet effective. A Mustang Mach I transverse rear muffler, which has two inlet pipes and two outlets, is the sole silencing device, and it’s an ideal solution. The car burbles aggressively yet doesn’t scream—a mandate from Newman. Eisert never won the Indy 500 as a car builder, but his prowess in that regard was adequate, as his cars were regulars on the USAC champ-car circuit back in the day. Eisert and team spent a considerable amount of effort on airflow management, with the placement of numerous ducts and scoops to make sure cooling air was directed in and through the radiator and oil cooler.
Enter Sam Contino. An auto repair shop owner who in the late 1960s was not a credentialed teacher, Contino convinced the administrators of Chaffey College in Alta Loma, California, that motorsport was a great way to engage young people in automotive engineering, that the school would benefit from an auto-racing-technology engineering program, and that he was the guy to develop the program and run it. They agreed, and Chaffey inaugurated what was at the time the nation’s first college program that offered a curriculum in race-car development and construction. Sam and his students brought several of their cars to Ontario Motor Speedway for an event, and there he befriended Newman. By this time, Newman had had his fun with the VW, and Contino convinced him to donate it to the school, which he did. The car was repainted in Chaffey’s colors of red and white and became one of the crown jewels in the program’s roster of race cars and engineering project vehicles.
Three-time Indy winner Bobby Unser, actor Paul Newman, and Chaffey College students admire this revived Beetle. The college presented it to automotive professor Sam Contino when he retired.
Contino remained friendly with Newman and served as an honorary pit crew member at the Indy 500 in 1985 for the Newman/Haas racing team. He recalls that his primary job was to place the cover over the rear wing of Mario Andretti’s race car when Andretti parked the car in the pits after practice or qualifying.
The VW lived a hard but fruitful life in the Chaffey program as an engineering exercise, and when Contino retired in 1986, the school gave him the car as a retirement present. “It was all there,” Contino says, “but it was tired and rough around the edges.” He and son Tom decided the car deserved to be restored to pristine condition, in honor of their friend and hero Newman. Tom is a veteran of numerous hot-rod builds and several restorations and has a fully equipped shop at his home, so the father-and-son team decided they could tackle the job themselves, farming out whatever they couldn’t handle. Contino the younger said their goal was to “make the car like it was when Newman and Eisert built it; there were some engineering foibles that could have been improved upon, but [they] wanted to stay true to the original concept and engineering.”
The VW was disassembled to the last nut and grommet and beautifully rebuilt. Their craftsmanship and quality of work ultimately made the car much nicer than it was originally, but no reengineering was done. Chaffey’s red-and-white color scheme was dispensed with, and the car is the original solid red. Ancillary gauges were added to monitor the engine’s oil and water temperatures and oil pressure, but other than that, and the addition of custom-made PS “kidney bean”-style modular wheels, the car is much as Eisert built it.
The sound of the engine is nothing like any other Beetle I’ve ever met. When the engine lights, you’ll look around for a nearby Mustang or Cougar Eliminator. It then settles into an easy American V-8 idle and gurgles softly through its dual-exhaust pipes. The ZF transaxle’s shifter turns out to be the touchiest element of the entire installation. In a Pantera or a Mangusta, the shifter is gated, but the linkage must be adjusted perfectly to enable smooth shifts. When everything is spot on, these gearboxes are a joy to row. In this car, there is no shiftgate, and the linkage makes a long and circuitous trip back to the transaxle. So finding gears is a little tough, and even though I have experience with these trannies, I grind and zing it more than a few times. There’s so much torque that second-gear launches are easy, so I usually dispense with the dogleg first and take off in second. The 2-3 shift is a straight-back motion in this box, so it’s slick and easy most every time.
And it’s a thrill; the mix of muscle car sounds and sports car sensations is delightful. The steering is sharp and well-weighted. The car also reminds you how beautifully built and finished early VWs are, although, granted, this one is fresh and has been done to a high standard. As Newman once said, it’s great for tight turns. It handles well enough and feels relatively neutral, although high-banked, high-speed turns might be scary, especially because there are no aerodynamic body mods present, and a stock Beetle convertible’s high-speed stability is suspect anyway.
Contino has accomplished what he wanted to with the Newman VW-Ford, which was to restore it to prime condition in honor of its first owner and creator, and he hinted it would be for sale to the right serious buyer at the right price. Interested?
1963 Volkswagen Convertible Specifications
- Engine: 351.0-cu-in/5752cc OHV V-8, 1x4-bbl Autolite carburetor
- Power and torque (SAE gross): 300 hp @ 5400 rpm, 380 lb-ft @ 3400 rpm
- Drivetrain: 5-speed manual RWD Brakes front: drum, rear: drum
- Suspension: (front) control arms, coil springs, anti-roll bar; (rear) multilink, coil springs
- Dimensions: (L) 160.6 in, (W) 60.6 in, (H) 51.2 in
- Weight: 2200 lb (MT est)
- Performance: 0-60 mph: 4.2 sec, quarter mile: 12.4 sec @ 117 mph (MTC est)
- Price when new: More than a VW, less than an Eisert Indy car
Ask the Man Who Owns One
Sam Contino / Retired Educator
- WHY I LIKE IT: “It’s the only one of its kind, and it was owned and commissioned by one of the world’s greatest racing/acting icons.”
- WHY IT’S COLLECTIBLE: Ditto
- RESTORING/MAINTAINING: It’s a pretty straightforward car, as long as everything is working and up to snuff.
OUR TAKE
- THEN: “That Volks was really wacky. I’ve driven it at Ontario Motor Speedway, just goofing off, but the car is much better on a tight track than it is on a long one because high-speed turns are really hairy in that thing.” —Paul Newman, Motor Trend, August 1970
- NOW: A wonderfully zany one-off, conceived and commissioned by one of Hollywood’s greatest car guys, and a serious racer to boot. Worth what a serious fan will pay for it.
