How to Build a Drivable Half-Beetle

You have almost certainly seen it cross your Instagram or TikTok feed: a VW Beetle, sliding along the parking lot as if it’s half-submerged, roof like a shark fin in the shallows. What is it? Who built it? Why?

“I wanted it to look like a car that was so low, it had basically just ground itself down into the pavement,” says Steve Lodi of Dallas, Texas, which answers the second and third questions at least. The former glass blower turned Volkswagen tuner tells us that he typically builds VWs with glossy paint jobs and trick air suspensions, but this time around he wanted to do something a little different.

“I didn’t want it to look special or modified in any other way, and I think that’s why it works. When I first started posting pictures of it, people were saying that I must have poured concrete around it, or that it was in water. They didn’t quite understand what was going on.”

Dubbed the “Half Ass,” the build blends Lodi’s interest in all things VW with his love of wild fabrication projects, the latter of which began in the early 2000s when he decided to turn a Honda Civic sedan into a pickup truck. “That project really got me into the idea of changing cars up rather than just modifying them, and turning them into what I wanted them to be.”

Lodi’s stable also includes a meticulously restored ’58 Beetle on a ’67 chassis powered by a 1759cc stroker engine, and he says that a big part of his motivation to embark on the Half Ass project was to have a car that he didn’t have to worry about at shows.

“I wanted something that I didn’t have to watch like a hawk to make sure that it’s not getting fingerprints or door dings. If you bump into this thing, you’re going to improve it.”

Inspired by a similarly vertically challenged Fiat Panda project by Italian YouTube channel Carmagheddon, Lodi started putting the feelers out for a cheap Beetle body earlier this summer and eventually secured a collection of rusty parts from a ’74 Standard. To determine just how far he could take things, he lay on the ground and measured how high his head would need to be in order to see out of the windshield. After using a laser level to ensure that he’d get a clean line all the way around the car, out came the Sawzall and cut-off wheel.

“There was a big Volkswagen show coming up, Texas Versus the World, and I wanted to get it finished in time to bring it there,” he explains. “People would come by the shop while I was working on it, and I kept telling them not to take any pictures of it. I wanted it to be kind of a surprise.”

Underpinning the body is a chassis that Lodi hand-fabricated from one-inch square tubing, which he outfitted with the steering shaft and spindles from a used go-kart that he found on Facebook Marketplace.

“I had initially planned to use the go-kart chassis, but once I started taking measurements for everything that needed to go inside the body of the car, I realized that none of it was going to work. I actually had to shrink things down—it’s much narrower inside than you would think because the front wheels need to be able to turn inside of the body.”

The running gear comes from an 80 cc Honda Elite scooter, which donated its engine, transmission, throttle controls, and fuel system to the project, along with its handlebars and brakes. The Beetle’s rear wheels were also borrowed from the scooter, while the fronts were sourced from Harbor Freight.

Although the bodywork was completed in August, Lodi had to focus on customer projects until just a few days before the September 16th event. “The show was on a Saturday, and I started making everything and putting it all together on the Wednesday before that,” he recalls. “I was awake for about 40 hours between Friday morning and Saturday night. But if I say I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it, and I told people that the car was going to be there.”

Judging by the response it received at Texas Versus the World, it seems to have been well worth the effort.

“I think I collectively drove it about a mile at the show, and every time I took it out, everyone stopped in their tracks and got their phones out,” he says. “And that’s exactly what I built it for—something to have fun with at shows, something I didn’t need to baby.”

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In the time since the event, footage of the Half Ass has amassed millions of views on social media, and Lodi says that a number of folks have reached out asking him to build something similar for them.

Although he says that this particular project is essentially done, there are a few finishing touches that he’d like to add. “It’s tough to transport. You can’t really put it on a trailer because you’d need the world’s longest ramps, so I’m going to fabricate up some removable handles that go on the side, so you can kind of carry it into and out of a truck bed or something like that. And I should probably make an actual seat for it; right now it’s just a piece of wood strapped to the frame with a pillow on it.”