• Like I usually do, I’m relying on the ‘Ted Bundy Multiagency Investigative Team Report 1992‘ for my information on this article but I’m also heavily depending on a piece my friend Erin Banks wrote to help fill in the gaps and fix the inaccuracies (I posted the link to her article below).
• The first time I remember Bundy commenting on a vehicle was when he was talking about his stepfather’s car: he said that he often felt humiliated being seen in Johnnie’s run-down old Rambler. Fun fact: Ted apparently learned how to drive at 15 (before he legally had his license).

• Despite consistently owning cars Ted was known to borrow vehicles from loved ones and acquaintances:
• Around 1969 he borrowed his cousins car for an entire summer after Diane Edwards ended their romance (I don’t know any other details).
• He not only had Mrs. Ferris’ (from his days at the Seattle Yacht Club) drive him places he also borrowed her car on occasion. Despite scouring the internet I couldn’t find what the make and model of her vehicle was.
• Bundy often “borrowed” his gf’s Liz Kloepfer’s 1973 light blue Beetle (on two occasions she thinks he took it without asking).

• Ted was an accomplished car thief long before his jail breaks began in 1977: he had a lengthy juvenile record that Louise Bundy helped pay to have sealed when he turned eighteen (as to not potentially damper his “bright future”).
• In September 1965, Bundy bought his first car: a 1933 Plymouth Coupe with money he earned working as a forklift operator working at ‘City Lights Tacoma’ (he was also a student at the time at the University of Puget Sound). 
• In April 1966 he sold the Coupe to put money towards a pale blue 1958 VW Bug. It was smaller, more reliable and got better gas mileage than his clunky old car.
• Bundy owned a white pickup truck at some point in time (I couldn’t find much information about that particular vehicle). I could have sworn I read somewhere that it was his brothers truck but when I looked into it I couldn’t find any information on it. According to the TB Multiagency Report he owned it until late 1975 (November/December). 
• A blurb from the website ‘the outline’ mentions that Ted’s friend Marlin Vortman owned a VW Bug similar to the one he drove; I wonder if this is the ‘Washington TAG OYU-19 (7-18-1973) Owned by friend of Bundy, King County Washington,  Make/Model Unknown’ mentioned in the TB Multiagency Report.
• At some time in the spring of 1973 Ted purchased his infamous tan 1968 VW Bug from a woman named Martha Helms. Countless murder victims (many of them unknown) across multiple states were inside of this car. On August 15, 1975, Bundy fled the scene in this vehicle when Utah Highway Patrol officer Bob Hayward tried to pull him over in Granger. When Officer Haywood eventually caught up to him and searched it he found: “a crowbar behind the driver’s seat, a box of large green plastic garbage bags, an ice pick, a flashlight, a pair of gloves, torn strips of sheeting, a knit ski mask, a pair of handcuffs, and a strange mask made from pantyhose.” Law enforcement also observed that the passengers seat had been removed and placed in the back seat. Bundy was arrested for evading an officer and was released the next day on bail (there was nothing found in the car at the time linking him to any additional crimes). When the Bug was impounded after Ted was arrested forensic experts found DNA in it that helped link him to the murders. In 1978, SLC Sheriff’s Deputy Lonnie Anderson bought the death wagon for $925 (US) and it sat for in storage for almost twenty years. Deputy Anderson put it up for sale for $25,000 in 1997 and it was purchased by a well-known Murderabilia collector named Arthur Nash. In 2010 Nash leased it to the ‘National Crime And Punishment Museum’ in Washington DC and when that museum closed in 2015 it was moved to the ‘East Alcatraz Crime Museum.’ At one point Nash said he had plans to have the vehicle swabbed for DNA however as of April 2023 this has not happened. Who even knows if there would be any usable genetic information remaining after so much time has passed? I think one of my favorite Bundy back-and-forth’s is whether or not he removed the VW’s door handle (I don’t think he did). Looking into the particular make and model of Beetle it doesn’t seem that it was as easy as just taking a few screws out of the mechanism and popping out the handle: you most likely needed to take the entire door panel off and it was a process. I know unconfirmed (and living) Bundy victims Sotria Kritsonis and Rhonda Stapley both claim that the man that lured them into his VW Bug removed the inside door handle, however no one else reported ever seeing this. Liz never commented that she was ever in his car without a passenger’s side handle on occasion, nor did any of his other friends.
• Thanks to a lot of time spent digging I was finally able to come across a small snippet of information I’ve only seen in one source: On the afternoon of Saturday. February 10, 1978 Ted made his first attempt to depart Tallahassee, FL (he had killed Kim Leach the day before): sometime between 4 and 6 PM he started looking inside parked cars for keys left in the ignition. Within minutes he found a 1975 Toyota in the parking lot of an auto repair shop and was off. He took the car back to The Oak (where he watched TV with a friend for awhile, Frances Messier) then went out for the night. That same time Tallahassee Police Officer Roy Dickey was sitting in an unmarked patrol car trying to find information related to the Chi Omega case. He saw Bundy walking near his vehicle and said Bundy noticed him immediately. and made a quick getaway. When he arrived back at The Oak he immediately started packing the stolen Toyota. dickey he had parked it about a block away. Around 1 AM Deputy Keith Dawes was doing patrol and came across Bundy “locking or unlocking a car door.” The officer said that where the individual didn’t do anything in particular to warrant his attention he was still drawn to him for an unknown reason. Deputy Dawes got out of his patrol car and approached Bundy, immediately asking him for ID. Ted quickly said he didn’t have any on him but mentioned he’d just come out to grab something quick from his car. When the officer asked “where do you live” he answered almost without thinking, “College Avenue.” As they continued to chat a bit the officer started looking around the vehicle with his flashlight and spotted a single license plate in the backseat. When questioned about it Bundy said that he had found it laying around somewhere and wasn’t sure exactly what to do with it. It was then that he got spooked and quickly (and successfully) sprinted away. The car and property inside of it was immediately impounded (Sullivan, The Bundy Murders).
• On February 12, 1978 at around 11 AM Bundy attempted to steal a white 1972 Mazda but didn’t make it very far: there was a sort of “shimmy” in the front end and it wasn’t safe to operate. He quickly ditched it for something else.
• Immediately after Ted ditched the Mazda he found a VW Bug but realized almost right away it was somebody’s baby (just by the way it was souped up and decorated). He quickly got rid of it (he has a conscience about a car but not for human life?).
• Bundy eventually came across an orangish-red 1972 Volkswagen Beetle owned by Rick Garzaniti, who had purchased the car in April 1974. The evening of February 12, 1978 Garzaniti went to a buddy’s house and left the keys in the car (he didn’t plan on staying long) but got distracted by a Burt Reynolds movie (haven’t we all?). He left it parked behind the friends residence in an alleyway. When Rick eventually went to leave he discovered his car had vanished; he immediately reported it as stolen. Three days later he got a call from law enforcement letting him know that his vehicle had been found however it was being held as evidence; it wasn’t released to him until almost two months later. When he finally got it back it was covered in dark black fingerprint powder, a sizable chunk was missing from the upholstery, and the backseat was gone. Additionally Garzaniti found some items in it that didn’t belong to him, including several license plates and some random bicycle parts.