Indholdsfortegnelse for August 2017 i VolksWorld

“This year it’s my 50th, so I decided that it was a case of now or never when it came to fulfilling my Mille Miglia dreams” The Mille Miglia is a gruelling historic rally that takes place annually in Italy. It starts from Brescia in the north, heads down the eastern side of the country to Rome, then journeys back up the western side to Brescia again. This 1,000-plus mile route has to be tackled in just four days, each of which can include up to 18 hours behind the wheel. JK’s MD Mark Reynolds saw the race while cruising around Italy in a VW Beetle and promised that he’d take part himself one day. That was before establishing JK and having a family, and both have kept him fairly…

“From a side profile, you can’t even see the roll bar or custom seats” Anyone who visited this year’s VolksWorldshow could well be forgiven for missing this ’69 Cal-Look. I mean, it’s not exactly an in-your-face kind of car, though in its defence, it does pack an awful lot of clever and detailed features – a fact not lost on the judges who included it in the Top 20 awards list. The car was completed just in time for the show by 30 year-old Broen Messiaen from Izegem in Belgium, and Broen would be the first to confirm the car’s subtle intentions. As he explained, “If you look at it for the first time, you just think, ‘late-model Bug with T-bars and Porsche wheels,’ but take another look and you…

“I wanted the car to look and drive exactly like it was still 1965”  Calling this an ‘incredibly original restored Beetle’ sounds like an oxymoron but what else can we say when the car has been completely stripped, then rebuilt using almost all the old parts? “It’s entirely the original metal and all the original interior,” confirms owner Paul Stacey who was there for virtually every minute of the time it took Lee Jenkins of Leatherhead-based J-Dubs to carefully rebuild the car for him. “I’ve been into Volkswagens since I was 15,” says Paul, “I lived the whole Devon surf scene. When I got my first VW (a 1971 1302 Beetle) I stripped it down the same day I drove it home. Later I had it professionally painted to…

Chapeau! Debuted at Sandown Park, this fully restored 1955 Karmann Kabriolett Beetle from France was a real contender for Best of Show. We tell its story… Fixing the fixes Andy Tonks uncovered a Pandora’s Box of bodges and bizarre ‘fixes’ when restoring this now stunning ’67 Beetle Cream dream Sam Brader has a long and distinguished history of rescuing old VWs. And with a heartfelt Australian connection, this Beetle allowed his dreams to take flight Better all the time This 1963 eBay find was in pretty good shape to begin with, but that didn’t stop the new owners spending the next three years making it even better Don’t miss it!…

July Bullis Verbinden Date:6-9 July 2017 Location:Soltau, Germany Contact: www.bullis-verbinden.de Bundle O’Dubz Date:7-9 July 2017 Location:SouthWoodham Ferrers, Essex Contact: www.vwbod.co.uk Coxwenn Club Date:9 July 2017 Location:Calais, France Contact: coxwennclub62@hotmail.com VolksPower Date:14-16 July 2017 Location:Redcar Rugby Club Contact: www.volkspower.co.uk Volks Weald Date:15-16 July 2017 Location:Penshurst Place, Kent Contact: www.volksweald.co.uk Dubs at the Castle Date:21-23 July 2017 Location:Caldicot Castle, Monmouthshire Contact: www.dubsatthecastle.co.uk Bug Jam Date:21-23 July 2017 Location:Santa Pod, Northants Contact: www.bugjam.co.uk Dub Odyssey Date:28-30 July 2017 Contact: www.dubodyssey.com Dubtoberfest Date:28-30 July 2017 Location:Cheltenham Racecourse Contact: www.dubtoberfest.co.uk Kent VWFestival Date:28-31 July 2017 Location:Sandwich Showground, Kent Contact: www.kentvwfestival.org.uk Outcast Overnight Date:28-30 July 2017 Location:Fort Paull, nr Hull, EastYorkshire Contact: outcastcchull@gmail.com August VW WhitenoiseFestival Date:3-6 Aug 2017 Location:Euston Park Estate, Suffolk Contact: www.vwwhitenoise.com Bug Run Classic Date:4-5 Aug 2017 Location:Tierp Arena Uppsala County, Sweden…

“I went to the local bank and came back with a stack of cash, about 200,000 Baht” When you first see Ben Clifford’s 1967 Volkswagen Bus you are immediately struck by how clean it looks; there’s excellent paint on arrow straight panels, nice wheels too, but it perhaps doesn’t look that out of the ordinary. There’s no radical bodywork or wild colours, it’s a mildly modified example much like quite a few other well-built Splitties, right? Well, no. For a start the body is as good as anyone could ever get it and far better than when it left the factory. Every panel is perfectly smooth, every shut line precise and even. The interior is equally high quality and then you look underneath and at the engine and, incredibly, it’s…

“It’s an all inclusive affair, everyone is welcome” There are shows that you just need to go to. Shows where you can just kick back, chat and relax. There’s no pressure, no phone signal, just lots of nice cars to potter around and the lure of an autojumble with its promise of allowing you to uncover a treasure or two. Yes, we’re talking about VW Expo at Stonor Park, organised by the kind and gentle folk at The Association of British Volkswagen Clubs (ABVWC). It all happened on a sunny Sunday (4 June) in the usual lush, countryside location a stone’s throw from Henley-on-Thames. The format was as in previous years; the morning’s all about turning up, getting parked and grabbing a quick coffee before checking out what’s up…

The theft of classic VWs is becoming increasingly worrying, especially now that values have soared and there’s money to be made. But sadly, there’s no straightforward answer to protecting your vehicle and no 100% thief-proof method of ensuring it cannot be taken. Instead, there are a number of ways to make pinching it more difficult, the most popular of which we’ve outlined over the following pages. Cut-off switches, locks, alarms, immobilisers and trackers are some of the options worth considering. Many are quick and simple to install, and most can be fitted yourself. However, there’s no single device that provides the best, most foolproof measure to combat theft which is why we recommend fitting several at the same time. A scattergun approach, if you like. Thieves will often do their…

“we want to preserve as much as possible, not make a ‘brand new’ Bus” Barnfinds always create excitement. But when the barn is actually an overgrown bush on a piece of open land and the vehicle is possibly the second oldest surviving original Samba, things suddenly become a lot more interesting. The discovery was made a few weeks ago in the Eifel, a small mountain range a stone’s throw from the famous Nürburgring in Germany. The piece of land in question had just changed hands, with the new owner dismayed to find the abandoned vehicle, or what’s left of it, hidden in foliage where it had laid, apparently, since the early 1960s. But here’s the important bit. This isn’t just any old Samba. Judging by the ID plate, it was…

“in six-pot form, a 914 could dance rings around many versions of the 911” The 914 is a car with an identity crisis. Is it a Porsche? Or a Volkswagen? Or some strange mash-up of the two marques, unloved and shunned by both its parents, and looked on with some uncertainty by everybody else? And to be honest, does it really matter, now that it’s nicely matured into an affordable and distinctive sports car that enthusiasts of both badges should be able to appreciate? It has pop-up headlamps for starters. And is mid-engined, too. You know, like Ferraris, Lamborghinis and proper Maseratis. There’s always been a close relationship between Porsche and Volkswagen. After all, without Ferdinand Porsche, there would have been no Volkswagen, and likewise, the Porsche 356 initially borrowed…

It’s hard to believe the new Golf-based Beetle has been around for two decades now, but to most readers that’s a fact probably not worth remembering. However, before you turn the page in disgust it’s worth pointing out that Brad Hassall, the owner of this awesome 1200 Bug of the air-cooled variety, would have been wearing nappies around the same time the New Beetle first hit the streets. Time flies, as they say, but reassuringly, it’s great to see the fascination and dedication of restoring a classic air-cooled Dub lives on in the youngest of Britain’s drivers. “I’d always been into VWs, even before I passed my test,” reveals 20 year-old Brad. “I prefer the classics and started looking at Mk1/2 Golfs, but at my age it would have been…

“Exclusivity is seldom this affordable or stylish” As the old saying goes, inside every VW owner there’s a Porsche owner trying to get out. It’s kinda hard to deny and goes some of the way to explaining why so many of us pay through the nose to ‘upgrade’ to an air-cooled Porker. Trouble is, the price of early Stuttgart tin has gone through the roof and disappeared into the wide blue yonder. So what do you do when you want to keep it air-cooled, but drive something a little more exotic? The answer is obvious; you turn to the thinking man’s sports coupe, the Karmann Ghia. We’ve been banging the drum for the Ghia for years now, and it’s still a complete mystery to us why so few of you,…

“the engine purred like a kitten all the way to Reykjavik!” In the late 1960s, to commemorate the first direct crossing of the Atlantic, in 1919, by Alcock and Brown in a Vickers Vimy twin-engined biplane, the Daily Mail organised a race from the top of London’s Post office Tower to the top of New York’s Empire State Building, or vice versa. One man determined to compete was airline pilot Mira Slovak, a Czech-refugee American citizen from Santa Monica, California. And just to add spice to the trip, he decided to make the leap from his usual Boeing 727 cockpit to that of what would be easily the smallest aircraft in the race – a single-seat Fournier RF4 ‘motorised glider’ which he named Spirit of Santa Paula. For engine power,…