Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2026 i VolksWorld

Let's begin by welcoming you to the annual California Look Special, which is packed with some of the best, most authentic Cal Look cars we could find. While it is always tempting to fill this particular issue of the mag with US-built cars, in recent years we've tried to showcase British and European-built ’Lookers. After all, it's a global movement these days, albeit one named after the place the style originated. I'm assuming there's no need for me to repeat the story behind the California Look, as we've covered it in detail in previous February issues. However, should you have any questions, I would suggest a simple online search, which will quickly send you into a bottomless rabbit hole surrounding what does or doesn't constitutes a Cal Look VW! I'd…

There was something special about sitting down with Larry Schultz to discuss his ’56 Oval. It was more than just a chat about the car, it was the realisation that we were talking to someone who grew up in the epicentre of the California Look movement, and whose whole family is steeped in Cal Look history. This is a man who, in 1979, for his 16th birthday present was given a ’57 Oval, whose father campaigned one of the better known chop top VW race cars for over a decade, whose brother had a ’67 street ’n’ strip car, and who has bought parts from, and had engines and transmission built by, some of the scene’s true legends. Larry’s father, Rod Schultz, was a teenage stock car driver from Boston,…

We’d seen photos of this modified Split Window Beetle before, but didn’t know very much about it, other than what we could glean from close inspection. The photograph we have in our archive shows it taking part in an early drag race meeting at the Ramstein airbase in Germany, in the company of a number of 1950s and early ’60s American cars. Naturally, we were intrigued, so were very excited when longtime friend of VolksWorld, Paul Rui from Norway, bought an old photo album at auction that had within its pages some more pictures of the very same car. Finally, we could ascertain a little more detail about the car. “A press cutting talks of 220bhp, but that’s a little hard to believe” Chevy power We now know, for instance,…

It’s been a diverse month of car stuff at Barefoot Towers. I’ve been doing freelance classic VW and Porsche work for a few years now and this month I’ve worked on everything from a Porsche 356 Outlaw to Bay Window Buses, as well as carrying out a couple of pre-purchase inspections for people, doing my writing and photography work and pressing ahead with Barefoot Inc. Life is busy, but anything but boring right now. One of the pre-purchase inspections I did was for a mate. The late Bay pick-up he ended up buying is his first air-cooled VW, so it’s an exciting time for him. As the market has dipped quite a lot of late, there are plenty of reasonably priced VWs on the market. He paid £4,000 less than…

Ninove (or near to), Belgium-based Cal Look enthusiast, Sam Pasteleurs, has owned this 1963 sunroof Bug for no less than 22 years now. In that time, the car has gone from being his daily driver to street racer to drag car before Sam decided to take it off the road for a full restoration. That decision was made almost a decade ago now, but the end result is something to behold. As is so often the way, patience is the key to achieving perfection. Since childhood, Sam has been drawn to classic cars; a passion that would eventually shape his career. Trained out of school as a mechanic, Sam has spent the past 20 years working for Marreyt Classic Cars, a company that specialises in the restoration and maintenance of…

There’s something pleasingly defiant about a 21-year-old lad choosing to invest the cost of a brand new car into a 1970 Cabriolet Beetle that had been gathering dust since 1990. That’s precisely what Paul Richelmann from Osnabrück, Germany did, though, and the result is this Kings Red Cal Look Cab’ that perfectly embodies the ethos of the style – clean, purposeful and packing serious performance beneath its gleaming, no-nonsense paintwork. “I could easily have bought a brand new VW for less,” Paul admits with a grin, “but I’d much rather own my California Look Cabriolet.” It’s a sentiment that’ll resonate with anyone who has ever chosen passion over practicality and, after four years of painstaking work, this 1914cc drop top is proof that good things are always worth the investment,…