Thomas Rusch short profile:

Hi, I'm Tom from Germany.
The Beetle has accompanied my automobile-life for more than ten years now.
In the beginning I just was looking for a cheap and reliable car. But it did not take much time till a near commitment was built up between the Volkswagen and me. This led to a hobby, which couldn't be much more many-sided. Since these days I drove my beetles more than 250,000 kilometers around Germany and many other parts of Europe. I screwed nearly every screw and nut of the Volkswagen while maintaining it.
My Beetles and me took part in more than 100 VW-meetings, and I visited a lot of exhibitions and swap markets. And everywhere I got to know a lot of people sharing my hobby and interests.
First, I owned a 1972 1200ccm-beetle, which was the maximum I could afford as a student of electrical engineering that time. One year later I sold it and bought a 1959 sunroof car. With that car I drove all day and all the year for more than seven years, until the need of restoration got greater and greater. Then I found a 1973 1303S, which had had an accident, but was cheap. So I restored that car (which was much easier than restoring the rusty 1959), tuned it a bit (this was even more easier than tuning the 1959 :-) ) and drove that car all day.
I sold the 1959, and some times later I bought a 1303LS Cabriolet as a second car. The Cab was also tuned by me. Meanwhile I've got a third beetle, a 1985 "Jubiläumskäfer" - Jubilee VW Beetle (last model imported to Germany by Volkswagen). I bought it because of its excellent condition with original 14.000 km. :-)
Some years ago I started collecting books and brochures concerning the Beetle or other classical Volkswagen models. My site "www.beetlebooks.de" should give you a small insight in the result of this part of my hobby. I'm also on of the two makers of "www.bugnet.de", which is the best visited German beetle fan page I know. If you're able to understand German, have a look at all those crazy people meeting there!
So keep on riding your beetles,
Tom!

Thomas visited this Site and send me an e-mail telling his kind opinion about my work and inviting me to visit his Site. Well I got astonished with his Site, that is written in German and English. He has a huge amount of books, catalogues, leaflets, instructions, etc. As soon as I visited his Site I asked him for selected copies of book's covers, the criteria was the type of drawing used. Thomas even sent me the name of most of the artists that made the cover drawings! We got in to communication and on 19MAY2000 I called him to confirm the receipt of the good quality images that you can visit in this Site.
Well he will be much happy if you could help him to find books, catalogues, leaflets, instructions, user's manuals, etc. he hasn't got in his collection yet. You can see his e-mail address below.
I thank Thomas for his participation and congratulate him for his dedicated and well organized work.

Thomas visitou o meu Site e me enviou um e-mail contando a sua gentil opinião sobre o meu trabalho e me convidando a visitar o Site dele. Eu fiquei maravilhado com o Site dele, que é escrito em Alemão e Inglês. Ele possui uma enorme quantidade de livros, catálogos, panfletos, instruções, etc. Logo depois de visitar o Site dele eu pedi cópias das capas de alguns livros selecionados, o critério de escolha foi o tipo de ilustração usada. Thomas inclusive enviou o nome de quase todos os ilustradores! Nós entramos em contato pessoal em 19MAY2000 quando eu telefonei para ele para a confirmar o recebimento e agradecer ao envio das imagens de boa qualidade que vocês podem ver neste Site.
Bem, ele ficará muito contente se vocês puderer apoiar o trabalho dele ajudando-o a encontrar livros, catálogos, folhetos, instruções, manuais do usuário, etc. que ele ainda não tem em sua coleção. O endereço eletrônico dele pode ser visto abaixo.
Agradeço a Thomas pela participação e envio os meus parabéns por seu trabalho dedicado e bem organizado.