A local high schooler drives her restored VW Beetle to the Chicago auto show

It all started with a VW Beetle in 2011. Hope Sellars was only 4 years old when she first spotted the classic car at the Champaign Cruisers Car Club, but she knew she wanted one.

So Hope started saving money. Because not only did she want a vintage Beetle, she also wanted to repair it herself.

Then, at age 12, she saw the tarnished shell of a 1960 VW Beetle for sale on Craigslist. She paid $960 for it, brought it home and went to work.

“She bought this rusty, incomplete car because she could afford it,” Hope’s mother, Tracy, wrote in a Facebook post last summer. “To this day I don’t have a dime in it.”

Hope, now a junior at Calvary Christian School in Bellefontaine, didn’t start from scratch when it came to restoring old vehicles. Your family has a lot of experience in this.

In fact, Hope helped her father, David, renovate his school car, a black 1983 Mercury Capri, which they completed when she was 12 years old. Not only did he teach her everything about restoration, he also helped her rebuild the battered old Volkswagen.

“It was basically a shell – no engine, no interior,” Hope said. “So it was a complete restoration.”

The project took four years to complete. During this time she learned body work, installing seat kits and glass, painting and welding. Lots of welding. The car sat in a three-sided barn for years, with little protection from rain and snow and was heavily rusted.

Hope invested about $4,500 of her own money into the restoration.

“All the money that went into it I earned myself,” she admitted. “I did little things like babysitting, mowing lawns and doing housework to earn money for repairs.”

And it paid off. Not only is the car now worth around $15,000, but Hope and her Beetle are also very popular in the classic car scene.

In early June, the Sellars took part in the five-day Hot Rod Power Tour – a traveling car show. One of the stops was Bowling Green, Kentucky, where about 6,000 vehicles showed up. Hope was asked to display her Beetle at the Continental Tires vendor booth, a special honor.

There Hope met Bob Ashton, who runs the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, held annually at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Chicago. Ashton started the conversation while Hope was cleaning her vehicle.

“He’s passionate about watching the younger generation work on cars,” Hope shared. “And he said he would like to show my car at the show.”

So Hope – along with her cousin Owen, who owns a restored 1948 F-1 Ford truck – was invited to take part in the national championships as a Future Generations guest. Although the show features hundreds of valuable classic cars, Hope and Owen have added their vehicles to a line-up of cars repaired by children their age. They also took part in a question and answer panel to talk about their work.

Hope received two awards at the national championships – the Leading Lady Award from MK Insurance and, according to Tracy, the Shining Star Award from “a very generous donor who recognized her skills and perseverance.”

Additionally, Hope and Owen received $450 from the Stoll Family and Stoll Racing Photography for their car projects.

The combination of being so young and female ensured that Hope garnered quite a bit of attention at nationals. They stopped by to watch her and David put together a new engine for their car live at the show, which is also unusual.

This all led to Hope being interviewed for an episode of an upcoming podcast.

“She accomplished a goal that many people start and never reach,” her father said. “Let your children dream their dreams and work hard for them.”

Although she enjoyed fixing her mistake and said she would be interested in taking ownership of another Volkswagen one day, Hope sees car restoration as more of a hobby than a career. She is currently interested in attending Cedarville University after graduation to pursue a degree in Biblical Counseling.