[rockpaperscissor]

Any Street Outlaws fans in the community will immediately recognize this ride. The Dung Beetle, driven by Jeff Bonnett (aka AZN) is a 1966 VW bug sporting nearly 500 fuel injected turbocharged horses. With its ratty looks, it's the ultimate "sleeper" and regularly dispatches modern muscle cars like Hellcats, Corvettes, Mustangs, Challengers and Chargers 1/8 mile at a time. Exotics like Lamborghini's and McLaren's have also proven to be no match.

My Dung Beetle started out as a free one page model of "Herbie", the VW from The Love Bug. Other than the Photoshop texturing, the only other modifications I made to the kit was with the wheels and tires (wider, larger diameter slicks at the back and narrower street tires at the front), the addition of some bars to the bumpers, and an Oklahoma license plate. It's scaled to approx. 1/35.

The real Dung Beetle's hood is hinged at the bottom and is normally opened about 8 inches at the top to accommodate all the plumbing for the turbocharger and exhaust, but to replicate that would have required more time and effort than I was willing to put into this simple model.

There are several other free VW Beetle models out there that are more rounded and detailed than this one - maybe someday.