Kansas couple sells 1946 Volkswagen Beetle

By KEVIN ELLIOTT
Topeka Capital-Journal

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — There is a special place in the hearts of nearly every car owner where they park fond memories of their first vehicle — Mark Merrill was working at a gas station when he bought his first car, a 1956 Volkswagen Beetle, at the age of 16.

Recently, Merrill arrived in Topeka from his home in northern California to reunite a Topeka woman with the car she and her husband bought more than six decades ago.

“It’s a beauty,” said Marcella Briery, the original owner of the 1946 Volkswagen Beetle. “It brings back a lot of memories.”

Briery and her late husband, John William Briery, purchased the car 63 years ago in Germany at the close of World War II and brought it back to Topeka in January 1947. The car, which is believed to be the first Volkswagen to ever arrive in Kansas and one of the oldest in the country, immediately created a stir.

“You better believe it did,” Briery said.

Dwarfed by its American counterparts, Briery said the car stood out among most other cars in Topeka. When the couple parked the car in public, it wasn’t uncommon for pranksters to pick up the vehicle and move it. Outside of its small stature, the automobile maker’s origin and connection to Nazi Germany didn’t help the vehicle blend into the neighborhood.

“Someone asked us how fast it would go,” Briery said. “(John) said he never had it over 120 — of course that was in kilometers.”

Merrill, who owns more than 30 Volkswagens, began restoring the car nearly two years ago. Ray Schubert, who works full time on Merrill’s collection, said nearly all of the car’s parts are original and have been restored to factory condition. The men estimate the vehicle is valued at more than $30,000. Briery and her husband paid $650 for the Beetle in 1946.

“I paid $19,000 for it,” Merrill said. “And it was in pieces, but mostly there.”

Beattie Dickson, of Topeka, said he often worked on the car for the Brierys after the war. Dickson, who said he flew more than 30 B-17 bomber missions as a turret gunner in the 8th Air Force, later attended Kansas State University and opened a repair shop.

Marcella said her husband traded the car to Dickson around 1956. At the time, she said the car was resting on jack stands in the couple’s backyard and damaged from the flood of 1951.

Merrill said someone who owned the car during the 1970s began researching its history. From that information, he learned the vehicle was sold in Germany and brought to the United States prior to the first Volkswagen being sold within the U.S. in 1949. He later found the original owner was still in Topeka. Although John Briery died in 2007, Merrill corresponded with the Briery’s daughter, Zona, while the car was being restored.

“I purposely brought it here to get more history of the car and to find what it was like after the war in Germany,” Merrill said. “(Marcella) was one of the first Americans to go over after the war. I was also interested in what it would be like driving ’Hitler’s car’ around Topeka after the war.

“It’s part of history.”

 

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