Before I came up with this look a year and a half ago (yes, it took me a year and a half to make the car look like my concept, amazing how the birth of a child slows things like that down, lol) I had been playing with other looks for my car. It had basically looked like it did for several years and I was getting board with it. Especially since there were now so many cars running around with widened smoothies after I did it. I started playing around in BugSelecta...
First thing I thought about was just slapping some BRMs on it and calling it a day...
I also considered a classic Cal Look with Fuchs, DOT Cheater Slicks, hard rake, T-Bars, etc.
I've always liked the German Look, so I considered that for a while. I realized though that to be a proper German Look car it would need to be IRS, have real race seats, be shaved, etc. I wasn't willing to modify such an original car (by original I mean stock pan, body, original seats, etc) that much. To me, without really trick suspension and a set of Recaros it would be a poser of a German look at best, so I scrapped that idea pretty quickly.
I wanted my car to retain its unique sense of identity, since my car had always been a little different (or at least it was at first...). So none of the above options really seemed appealing. Slightly frustrated, I started thinking about buying a Porsche 356 and building an Outlaw. I spent hours lurking around on some 356 forums, learning and absorbing everything I could about these cars. The more I learned though, the more I came to realize that early beetles and 356s were nearly identical mechanically. They even have some interchangeable suspension parts. My wheels started spinning to just make what I had reflect that style. Other than the color of the wheels changing from black to red then back to black and finally to silver, I managed to stay pretty true to my original concepts...