Peter Dohm wrote:
-----------much informative stuff snipped---------
(till homebuilders got to them!)

Very true! Plus the ones that found their way into and onto dune buggies,
small airboats, old BMW motorcycles, and heaven knows what else. The same
problem is true of Corvair engines, of which I've even seem one mounted in
the bed of a pick-up truck and driving an electric generator. The BMW 600
and 700 automobiles were never popular enough to have single seat aircraft
designed around them, at least in the US, and the little air cooled Subaru
engines were probably gone from the stock-piles before the Part 103
ultralight rule allowed 254 pounds empty. I suspect that the BMW and Soob
engines would have been chosen over the 1/2VW if availability permitted.



Nope.

The nonautomotive uses of VWs-the most creative was probably the 2
cylinder integral air compressor-and dune buggy building made only the
smallest dent in VW supplies. They sold probably fifteen million
aircooled VWs in this country and probably fifty thousand dune buggies
were the high point.

The BMW 600 and 700 used BMW motorcycle engine cores and the bikes
were far more popular.

The Citroen 2CV twins and GS fours were used in homebuilt airplanes
and kit bikes in Europe. Same deal.

Corvairs have probably had the highest percentage of predation along
with the 215 aluminum GM V8 but in both cases more have been summarilyy
scrapped than all hobby uses combined. Corvairs are still not
scarce-any old smallblock brings more money most of the time.