Primitive but Fun: the 1965 Volkswagen Squareback

Blog Note: I published this a few weeks ago but withdrew it so that I could post timely pictures of the April 5, 2025, Hands Off protest at the Washington State Capitol. Here is the Volkswagen again. 

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Ankara, Turkey

In the mid-1960s, my dad worked in Ankara, Turkey. He wanted to buy a car and ordered a 1965 Volkswagen Variant (known as the Squareback in the USA market). This was Volkswagen's Type 3 design, their attempt to cater to larger families with a slightly upmarket car compared to their classic Beetle.  

I am not sure why my dad did not choose the bus. I could see him in that kind of machine. But he opted for the little Squareback.

Small, medium, and large (not to scale)

1969 brochure, but the car looked the same as the 1965 model

I do not know if there were Volkswagen dealers in Turkey. I think he had never driven this type of car as a test. Volkswagen delivered the car to the docks in Istanbul. Awaiting delivery was common overseas mid-century. Dealers did not have parking lots covered with cars as in USA just waiting for you to drive one away. Normally, you paid a deposit, they ordered your car, and it was delivered weeks or months later. 

My dad was energetic. He took the train to Istanbul, picked up his shiny new car and drove it back to Ankara. How he negotiated the paperwork, I will never know. He had lived all over the world and was not intimidated by unusual bureaucratic issues. (But if he were still alive, how would he fare in modern USA, with every institution designed to make life clumsy, irritating, and inconvenient for the customer?) 

Hanging around, Farabi Sk., Çankaya District, Ankara, Turkey, 1965

At the Grand National Assembly, Ankara, 1965

This VW came with a 4-speed manual transmission, manual steering, manual drum brakes, and an almost non-existent heat system. The 54hp engine was a 4-cylinder pancake design mounted below the back deck, which left plenty of storage space. With the back seat down, you had a flat platform about 6 ft long. The car ran on very low octane petrol, which was perfect for Turkish use. The electrical system was 6 volt. There were no seat belts, but he added them in the USA. 

We lived in an apartment in the Çankaya District, which is still an exclusive neighborhood with embassies, museums, theatres, and better apartments. I spent part of 7th grade at the George C. Marshall Regional High School. We explored and visited Cappadocia, when it was a quiet backwater in central Anatolia. 

In late 1965, my dad's project in Ankara ended. We packed up, and, with me as passenger, drove the little Squareback west to Istanbul, and then on to Athens. I recall the back was well-filled with possessions. From Athens, on to Patras, and then the ferry boat to Brindisi. Then Rome and, finally, Genoa. From Genoa, it went by ship to Boston. We flew to London and then took a Boeing 707 PanAm flight across the ocean to Boston.

Belmont, Massachusetts

Living on Winn Street, Belmont, Massachusetts, 1969

My dad used the Squareback as his commuter car. We took summer trips to Nova Scotia and Ontario. I took driver education at Belmont High School in some behemoth Ford Galaxy, but practiced in the little Squareback. The car carried my friends and me on many hiking trips to the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  

Living in the snow, Belmont, Massachusetts, 1969

Pacific Northwest

In late 1971, another adventure. We packed my possessions and drove west to Seattle. The poor little 54 HP engine could barely manage 70 mph on a cool damp morning on the Great Plains. By the heat of midday, 65 mph was maximum with the accelerator floored. 

My dad left the Squareback with me and flew home to Massachusetts. I lived in the dorms and parked in the parking garages underneath Lander and McMahon Halls. Covered parking! 

On the Bremerton-Seattle Ferry, Washington, 1973

Somewhere at Mount Rainier, January 1974

Stevens Pass, Washington, January 1974

The little Squareback took my friends and me on many adventures in the Northwest, to Crater Lake, Mount Rainier, and Mount Saint Helens (before it blew up). With the rear engine over the drive wheels, that Squareback could go up muddy logging roads or snowy passes in the Cascades. I also did a roundtrip to and from Boston in summer of 1972. 

One trip while cross-country skiing at Snoqualmie Pass, someone broke in and stole the front seats. The police gave me a crate to sit on, and I drove back to Seattle. I bought better condition high-back seats at a junk yard.

If I was camping alone, I could sleep at an angle in the back and close the hatch. But with two people, we had to keep the hatch open at the bottom and let our feet stick out. If it was cold, our breath would condense all over the windows, and it was a mess to clean off the windows considering the almost non-existent defrost system.

The heat came from the engine fan via a tube in the middle of the car. Two levers controlled the air flow. One lever opened the vents to the floor. That was reasonably effective if the engine was hot and you had been driving a while. A second lever was supposed to direct air up to the windshield, but very little warm air made it to the glass surface. In other markets, Volkswagen sold a petrol powered heater, but I do not know if this was available in USA.

I sold the car to a friend. and moved on. I wish I had bought a classic Volvo station wagon then. That would have been a smart move. 

The Squareback had a sad end. My friend and his wife were moving across country. The Squareback rolled down an embankment in some reservation. When my friend last saw it, tribal members were stripping wheels, seats, and parts from the car. I wonder if the hulk is still down there? So it goes....

 

Tom Tom's museum/junk yard, Moab, Utah

Another treasure at Tom Tom's museum, Moab, Utah

In the last two decades, I have seen maybe 2 or 3 examples of a Squareback on the road. I saw some sad examples in Tom Tom's VW disposal yard in Moab, Utah. No one seems to care about restoring VW's Type 3 cars. I see a surprising number of restored Type 1 (Beetle) and Type 2 (bus) in Olympia, but no Type 3s. It was reasonable technology that did its job a long time ago. 

On the Waterfront, Raymond, Washington (2024)

Raymond is on an estuary of the Willapa River near South Bend in Pacific County, Washington. Much of the city was built on piles on the tidelands. Like many rural Washington cities, it was originally a lumber mill town with adjacent farming in the river valley. Early in the 20th century, the city was bustling with lumber mills and freshly cut logs trains. Ocean-going ships took lumber to distant ports. Like many Pacific Northwest towns, the Great Depression devastated the local economy. The economy revived during World War II and during the post-war housing construction boom. Logging began to diminish in the 1970s, and the town fell on hard times. Today, it is part of the Evergreen Coast and has partly reformed itself as a tourist and museum town.

Willapa River (Kodak Panatomic-X film, 80mm ƒ/2.8 Planar-CB lens, dark yellow filter)

Weyerhaeuser Raymond Sawmill (250mm ƒ/5.6 Sonnar lens, yellow-green filter)

Raymond Trestle swing bridge, Willapa River (40mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens)

Detail, railroad swing bridge (100mm ƒ/3.5 Planar lens)

The Raymond trestle is another example of the impressive engineering that railroads achieved early in the 20th century. The control house was wood and has partly collapsed. The bridge is part of the Willapa Hills Trail, but the trail needs to divert through town instead of cross the river here. 

Stan Hatfield South Fork Industrial Park (50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens)

Stan Hatfield South Fork Industrial Park

The Port of Willapa Bay runs several industrial parks with buildings rented to tenants. I do not know what this machinery once did.

Commercial Street, Raymond 

I plan to return to Raymond and look around some more. It is revitalizing, but there is old architecture and housing that I want to photograph.

The 2024 photographs are from Kodak Panatomic-X film and my Hasselblad 501CM camera. Praus Productions in Rochester, New York, developed the film in Xtol.

Inexpensive Gem: My $13.50 Canonet GIII QL17 Camera (Oly 18)

Long-term readers know that I periodically suffer from uncontrollable episodes of GAS. That is Gear Acquisition Syndrome, an ailment that most photographers suffer. 

Well-used Canonet G-III QL17 camera

Background

I have been bicycling more, and with the approach of dry spring weather, a compact bicycle camera might be handy. A logical choice is one of the compact rangefinder cameras from the 1970s and 1980s. But which model? The Japanese companies made millions of these cameras. But many have succumbed to age, fungus, moisture, corroded batteries, or gummed up lubricants. They were designed as mid-range consumer products, and it is amazing that so many are still functional 50 years later. 

The best summary of compact rangefinder cameras is on Steve Gandy's Cameraquest site. PetaPixel presented a summary of the Canonet models. 

I have experience with compact cameras:

• Some four decades ago, I used a Rollei 35S with an excellent 40mm ƒ/2.8 Sonnar lens. Why did I sell it? 
• About 20 years ago, I had a Canon Canonet QL19 camera, which took superb Kodachrome slides. But I sold it in the foolish days when I thought I would switch to digital. 
• For a few years, I used a Yashica Electro 35CC, but it failed via the infamous "pad of death." 
• My Olympus Trip 35 developed a lens alignment issue, so off it went. 
• My Voigtländer Vito BL is compact but has small fonts on the controls and has only a ƒ/3.5 lens. Optically, it is superb, but a bit too fiddly.
• Last but not least, my 1949 Leica IIIC is a compact jewel, but is also fiddly in the field. It is a deliberate tool, so maybe not quite right for a bicycle grab-and-take camera.

Being familiar with my Canonet of 20 years ago, I decided to try one again. Some of the later models cost serious $$$ from KEH and other vendors. The days of finding such a camera at a garage sale for $5 are long gone! On a whim, I bought a GIII QL17 for $13.50 plus minor shipping from the big auction site. $13.50?

Canon made a series of these fixed lens rangefinder Canonet cameras starting in 1961. They were  outstanding commercial successes. The earlier Canonets were big and heavy cameras. In 1969, the company redesigned the line to be smaller and lighter. Canon sold 1.2 million of the last version, the GIII QL17. QL meant Quick Load, a clever mechanism to make loading the film easier. And 17 represented the maximum aperture of ƒ/1.7. Canon also sold lower price 19 and 28 models. All had excellent coated lenses. The lens on the ƒ/1.7 model is a 6-element double-Gauss design, single coated.

A problem with all of these 1960s and 1970s cameras is they depended on 1.35 volt mercury batteries to power the light meters. The mercury battery had a steady voltage output until the cell was close to exhaustion. As a replacement, many people now use a Wein Cell, which is 1.4 volts. Hearing aide batteries, which are inexpensive, also work. 

Clean design with settings visible from above

Film path with Quick Load panel on the right. I removed the old foam light seals.

My camera was dirty, but some alcohol wipes cleaned it. The foam light seal strips had deteriorated into a sticky tar. Alcohol on Q-Tips and some toothpicks cleaned most of the glop. Although the viewfinder was a bit hazy, the rangefinder was accurate horizontally and aligned vertically. Best of all, this body did not suffer from the common sticky Canon shutter blade syndrome. The shutter speeds from 1/4 to 1/500 sounded reasonable, especially after some exercise. Even the self-timer was reliable.

Trouble: the light meter was comatose. I cleaned the contacts in the battery compartment, but there was no electrical activity of any kind. Instead, I can temporarily use my Reflx Lab light meter, a compact unit that slides into the flash shoe. At least ten Chinese companies have recently introduced small shoe-mount light meters with various types of displays and button configurations. I assume many of these meters share a sensing unit and integrated electronic package. 

Olympia

One early morning in March, after breakfast at Bread Peddler and while waiting for a car repair, I walked around 4th avenue and Capital Way. The light was soft. I loaded a roll of Kodak Ektar 100 in the Canonet. (Click any picture to expand it to 2400 pixels wide)

The parking lot located off Capitol Way at the alley that runs between State and 4th Avenues is usually dirty and trashed. But the graffiti is colorful. 

116 State Avenue

Capital Way view south

Capital Way power box

Conclusions

The 40mm ƒ/1.7 lens on this little Canonet is terrific! It is high resolution and shows little or no distortion. No complaints here. However, Canon used a filter mount of 48mm, which was semi-unique to Canon products. I ordered a 48mm vented hood from one of the Chinese vendors.

The Ektar 100 film was a pleasant surprise. In the past, I had trouble with the Ektar colors in bright sunny conditions. But in overcast, the contrast and bright colors are just right. I scanned these negatives on my Nikon Coolscan 5000 film scanner, while with previous rolls, I used a Plustek 7600. Possibly, the Nikon does some internal data processing in a different way, more suited to the Ektar color palette. Regardless, I'm pleased and will use Ektar 100 again.  

  

HANDS OFF! in Olympia, Washington (Oly 17)

Blog Note:  I just posted an article about my Volkswagen Squareback car. I will withdraw it and repost it in the future because I want to share some pictures from the April 5 Hands Off protest.

The Hands Off protest gathered in front of the Washington State Capitol on the afternoon of April 5, 2025. This mirrored hundreds of similar protest around the country and even internationally. People here and around the country were protesting the loss of medical research, funding for agencies, the gutting of scientific staff at federal research agencies, a chaotic tariff program, and potential threats to social security and medicaid enacted by Elon Musk and the felon traitor in the White House. I cannot predict if the protests will have any effect at all, but real American patriots are angry and are speaking out. 

View of the Capitol steps

The speakers were on the north steps of the Capitol. It was a bit hard to understand what they were saying. My wife and I walked around and admired the signs. The crowd was in a good mood - no Molotov cocktails, burning effegies, or tear gas.

Here is a sampling of the signs, many quite clever.

A bit further north, sculpture and some handsome mature trees.

It was a sunny hot afternoon, almost a hint of summer. The crowd was peaceful and not too noisy. Several people commented to me that the current president made Richard Nixon and George Bush II look good. I did not hear anyone compliment Ronald Reagan. Hmmm.......

I took these photographs with my Fuji X-E1 digital camera with the compact 27mm ƒ/2.8 Fujinon lens. I set the jpeg output to be black and white but later realized that color was much more effective on this glarey sunny day. The pictures above are from the RAW files as opened with XNView MP software.