Aaron,
Email me a picture of your Super Beetle and I'll resize it for you to use as an Avatar.
As for your car, it IS a Super Beetle. What exactly is a Super Beetle?
From the door post back, a Beetle and Super Beetle are the same car. The BIG difference is the front suspension. Beetles, from the first prototypes back in the 1930s until the last one rolled of a Mexican assembly line in July 2003, had a twin torsion tube front suspension. In an attempt to make the Beetle drive and handle like a "modern" car, VW re-designed the front suspension, dropping the torsion bars and replacing them with a McPhearson Strut setup. All of the metalwork of the car had to be redesigned to go along with the struts. The torsion bar front beam had always bolted to the chassis, but the Super's struts were mounted into the redesigned fender wells.
The new design was released to the world in 1971 as the 1302 . . . but here in the states it was called the "Super Beetle." Beetles and Super Beetles were both produced and sold along side each other from '71 to '75. The 71 and 72 Supers shared the same flat windshield and dash with the Beetle, but 73 and up dash and windshield of the Super was redesigned to once again try to modernize the car that had, by that time, been for about 35 years without a major change in appearance.
Due to declining sales, the last Super Beetles sedans were produced in 1975. However the Beetle Convertible was dropped from the lineup when the Super's came out. All 71-79 (actually the last handfull were built in 1980) convertibles were Supers.
There are some Beetle enthusiast that will pretty much dis-own you if you drive a Super. Don't let that stop you . . . most of those folks will also dis-own you if you drive ANY Beetle built after 1967.
Super's are notorious for front end problems. The front suspension is "weak" compaired to the rugged design of the Beetle. But, keep in mind that the Beetle suspension was designed for pre-WWII German roads. Roads in the US today are (at least SOMETIMES) are a little better than the German roads of the mid-30s. If you get everything right on a Super's front end, it'll handle as good, if not better than most small to mid-sized cars today . . . but if anything, and I do mean ANYTHING is loose, worn, or mis-adjusted, a Super will shake and shimmy like mad between 45 and 55 MPH. The good news is there isn't that much up there. Crawl under it and take a good look at the suspension . . . pretty simple design, isn't it? It isn't hard to work on, and isn't "that" expensive to fix if EVERYTHING is bad.
How do you tell if you have a Super?
The Super has a coil spring with a strut inside. The strut fastens into the inner fender well at the top. A Beetle has a twin torsion beam front suspension that bolts to the front of the frame head.
The Beetle spare tire stands up (leaning back slightly) in the front of the trunk. The Super's spare is tucked away flat in the bottom of the MUCH larger trunk.
A Beetle's front fenders and apron end pretty much flat at the bottom. A Super's front fenders and apron kind of roll back up under the car slightly (it's hard to describe unless you see the two side by side . . . then it's obvious).
The front apron of Beetle is solid. The front apron of a Super sold in the US had a row of louvers across the bottom (like yours). This isn't 100% reliable though. Some Supers sold in markets other than the US didn't have louvers and replacement aprons without the louvers are avalible.
Any Beetle with a curved windshield is a Super . . . but not all Supers have curved windshields.
Hope this helps!
