As a retired engineer, it didn't take dad long to start making a few changes to Herbie.  My dad's father was actually trained by Volkswagen of America as a mechanic which eventually allowed him to open his own VW shop where dad would work in his spare time repairing cars and building engines when needed.  Now dad was not a VW lover from the very beginning in that he had a 1967 Chevrolet Camaro which he had modified with the latest big block L88 that produced over 500hp.  When he was 18, he was one of the first to put a Chevrolet 300hp V8 in a VW sedan and they would run the car at what was then The Gainesville International Speedway.  Anyway, with dad's knowledge in engineering, he quickly developed an electro-mechanical controller that basically performed around 6 functions automatically including turning the lights, windshield wipers/washer and horn on and off and even opening the hood using pneumatics since we now had 8 scuba tanks sitting around and not being used.  Herbie was an instant hit with the thousands of people visiting Old Town and was soon being asked for by name.

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Well, we continued to entertain the crowds up till around 1999 when I had my surgery and came down with MRSA.  Dad spent all of his time staying at the hospital with me and while he took a 12 hour break to rest, he was at home developing me an electro-mechanical hand so that when I finally got back on my feet, hopefully I could return to some of the things I use to do.  Turns out the custom hand was never needed and a few months after I was able to return home, dad decided that it would be a great time to refresh Herbie from the ground up starting with new floorboards and heater channels, stripping him down to bare metal and repainting him with the correct L87 Pearl White paint, getting the correct font for the decals and colors for the stripes, along with adding an aftermarket sunroof to make him look more like the movie cars.  We were not quite ready to return going to Old Town as of yet, so dad decided to upgrade the electronics and tricks that Herbie could do.  We never talked about or even tried to reproduce one of the movie cars since there were many different designs/cars used, but dad wanted to make my Herbie special where he could do many of the tricks they did in the movies with stunt cars, and still be able to drive him on the street, to car shows, etc.

In addition, he and mom had this idea of getting all of the stars from the first four movies that had been made at the time to autograph a special picture of me standing beside my Herbie as well as having them sign the glove box door.  It was quite an undertaking trying to catch the stars when they were either not making a movie or not traveling abroad, but eventually, they were able to get almost everyone to provide the autographs.  Unfortunately, Helen Hayes who played Mrs. Steinmetz in Herbie Rides Again had already passed away, but otherwise, they eventually got all of the leading actors including Don Knott's who was impossible to get to.  We finally met up with him around a year later while he was performing with Tim Conway at one of the Casino's in northern Mississippi.  As far as we know, this is the only glove box door in the world that contains this complete set of autographs, and the pictures still hang on the wall of my apartment as a special reminder of their kindness.

Well, dad continued to play around with the automation of Herbie until he had included almost everything he could think of.  Herbie would not only be opening his hood for everyone, but now Herbie's doors would open and close by themselves and he had air shocks that would allow him to move up and down as well.  He was refining the controller as he went along, and it did not take long before he and mom decided that it would be nice if they didn't have to actually sit and tell everyone what was so special about my car every time we went to a show, and that by adding a servo controller they could expand the display to include other animations as well. It didn't take long before they found the perfect hosts, a pair of white bears that were around 24 inches in height and were being closed out at Toys-R-Us.  They purchased the last two available and dad started to work his magic once again taking them apart and building a mechanical frame with servo motors that would allow each bear to have 9 different functions moving both arms and legs, their ears, their heads and even moving their mouths.  At the time, Billy Bass was his inspiration in that if they could make a fish sing, he could do the same with these new additions to our show.  Of course, it now required a computer to run the bears which meant an additional update to Herbie's controller to control the servos as well.  With the use of a simple laptop, he was now able to program the servos to move as he needed them to including moving the mouths of each bear to be in sync with scripts that he and mom wrote specifically for the bears so that they were now the ones telling the story of how they found Herbie in terrible shape and brought him back to life.  The audio for these tracks were fed out through a flex cable to each bear which had their own speaker built-in making it appear that they were doing the talking and dad found a way to modify his and mom's voices so that they were distinct.  They finally decided to name these two bears Beauregard (Bo) and Daisy after my second most favorite TV characters who played in The Dukes of Hazzard.  Dad then came up with this brilliant idea that they needed a companion so one day while visiting a thrift store in Mississippi while on vacation, he found the cutest little dog that they thought would be perfect and once again, the animation began including ears that would swing up into the air whenever Herbie would blow his horn, a tongue that would move in and out, and even a tail that would wag.  His name quickly became Duke with his own personalized collar.