Strong Bones
Flipping the front seats forward, you get a chance to check out the rear compartment, stuffed with Boston amplifiers, speakers, subwoofers and passive radiators. "Before I started any of the work in the rear of the car," says Curtis, "I laid down a steel sub frame skeleton." This skeleton provides a solid mounting surface for the components. "Working with the irregular sheet metal surface would have taken more time and caused more of a headache." In addition to the components, the amprack and armrest also benefit from the solid base. "I never drew anything down or did much design," Curtis reveals. "I had some basic ideas on placement of product in the beginning of the project and that was my foundation."
A Fine Thump/
The result of this configuration is that the bass has tremendous transient response, yet the 10" subwoofers, which take advantage of the piston area added by the passive radiators, serve up tight, ultra clean bass without a hint of sloppiness so characteristic of larger drivers installed in space-challenged applications. There's so much bass that Curtis installed a remote, dedicated bass level control that lets Likeness exactly match low-frequency output so as to not overwhelm the rest of the musical range.
Like the instrument panel, all of the rear compartment fabrication shows an obsessive attention to every detail; the craftsmanship is flawless, not a single fastener to be found anywhere. "The rear compartment is a very modular design," says Curtis. "Think about how small the door openings are. The completed enclosure needed to be designed in such a way that should something need to be serviced or even upgraded, it had to disassemble in such a way that it would be easy to do so."
Family connection
Likeness, now 23, adds one more element to the story: "The Beetle was a project between me and my older brother Kevin who passed away on November 12, 2000, with the car still unfinished." Four years went by with the Beetle in his parents' garage. "Because it was my brother's car, I decided to do him the justice of finishing the project." Little did he know that after the engine and body work, another year would pass to complete the interior. "In remembrance of my brother, I don't think I could've asked for anything more perfect." He plans to get the motor pinstriped with the word "klucker," his nickname.
In the 30-plus years since Rich Coe built the 1-Kilowatt Bug, car audio has come a long way, but in so many areas it seems we've taken just as many steps back as we have forward. Think hard about it, when was the last time you critically listened to a system that knocked your socks off? All too often, in an effort to bowl you over with more video screens than an electronics superstore, the beauty of sonically pure audio is lost in the shuffle. But not in this instance, as Curtis has designed and installed a system that a true purist, an aficionado if you will, can appreciate. In my book, Casey Likeness is one lucky V-Dub owner.