Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2020 i VWT Lifestyle

I quite like this time of year. The usual honey-pots are deserted, the roads less clogged and the lull between now and Christmas provides the ideal opportunity to get away from it all and enjoy a weekend away, Covid-19 rules permitting of course! The only enemy is the cold. When taking off in a 'Van at the tail end of the year, it's a job staying warm – especially in the evenings. That's why in this issue on pages 74-77 we've put together a special feature on how to keep nice and cosy in your Camper. Lots of the measures are common sense, while others involve a little more time and investment. Either way, given the fact that you'll be able to use your vehicle all year round will make…

Grab a great post-lock down deal and stay safe by having VW Camper&Bus delivered direct to your door.You can buy a single issue at the usual cover price, with free UK delivery (£1 extra for international postage), when you visit shop.kelsey.co.uk/issue/VWC. What’s more, UK customers can save money by ordering the three next issues for just £9.99 with our three-for-two offer at shop.kelsey.co.uk/suboffer/cb2ovwc (offer code CB2OVWC). We’ve even thrown in a free digital issue for good measure. Or how about a 12-month subscription so you can get the magazine before it hits the shops? We’re doing some good deals right now so check them out on pages 42-43 this issue or click on shop.kelsey. co.uk/subscription/VWC and use the code VWC2020. Oh, and don’t forget Kelsey publish a wide range of…

“We considered a T5 at first, but nothing really ticked all the boxes” Having owned a ’73 Beetle and a string of water-cooled Volkswagens, 38-year-old James Thorburn from Northampton and his partner, Andrea, have always wanted a VW camper. But, as James puts it, “I was always checking out the classifieds, but it never amounted to anything.” Having sold a property in France a while back, they came a step closer to realising their dream – however their initial thoughts erred towards something a lot newer than the vehicle you see here. “We considered a T5 at first, but nothing really ticked all the boxes,” said James. “As we live 10 minutes away from Santa Pod, we decided to go to Bug Jam, leaving our three children (then 1, 3…

The success of the Volkswagen Beetle was referred to as the economic miracle in Germany, and we can’t think of a better way of putting it. The rapidity of the escalation in sales was, quiet frankly, mind-boggling. How ironic that shortly after the end of WW2, two leading automotive companies at the time had been invited to take over the production of the unorthodox car but saw no future for it. Ford and Rootes were basically offered the VW free of charge but they dismissed the car in short order. The British Military Government had been in control of the VW factory at Wolfsburg since the end of the war and planned to pass it back to Germany as soon as the time was right. The first step to this…

You’re car people. Of course you are, or you wouldn’t be here right now reading a car magazine. And as such, you no doubt watch a lot of car makeover programmes. Producers of those love to ramp up the tension with segments about missing parts, apparently catastrophic rust that make a project uneconomical to continue and engines that won’t start before we cut to a commercial and come back only for it start on the second turn of the key and the rust be fixable after all. Makers of these shows also love to imply there’s a deadline that absolutely must be met or those financing the build will lose their shirt. The thing is, we all know it’s complete and utter nonsense. Cars only take days to restore from…

Sid Potts, 1970 Bay Window I’ve owned this Bay for around five years, and since taking delivery it’s been a case of gradually making it better. By this I mean fitting a 2.0-litre with twin Weber 34ICTs, lowering it and tidying up the interior. To be honest, I don’t know a huge amount about its previous history, other than it once resided in California and was imported into Holland, I think by Kieft & Klok. It found its way to the UK around nine years ago. I always said to myself that one of my first jobs would be to rip out the 1950s style pin-up girl/Hibiscus flower curtains which I hated at first but have since grown to like so they’ve stayed! I’ve done a few other jobs to…

Forty-something Vincent Povey has been a petrol head since forever. He explained, “I grew up in Dartford, Kent and my first car was a Super Beetle, which I bought with a seized engine and went on to repair and restore.” Then, in around ’94, Vince moved to the Isle of Sheppey where he developed a taste for hot hatches. Working his way through a Peugeot 205 GTi, a CTi (cabriolet version) and then a 1.9 GTI (great little cars!), he moved onto a Cosworth Sierra and later a BMW cabriolet. “Then I ended up buying a Mk1 Golf GTi cabriolet – it had a Mohair roof and that fuel injected 1800cc motor was a screamer… I really loved that car!” he said. The Golf stayed for three years, but as…

My trawling through back issues of Safer Motoring (later VW Motoring) recently turned up an example of a motorhome that I’d quite forgotten. Reading our report in the August ’87 issue reminded me that, at the time, I’d considered it rather ugly, with the standard-issue Transporter wheels dwarfed by the cumbersome, overhanging body. The Horizon Classique was a product of the Rochdale-based constructors Foster & Day. By no means one of the larger firms in the business, they nevertheless ranked among the most innovative and adventurous – and as I rediscovered, it shows when you look in more detail at the Classique. Definitely in the ‘when did you last see one of those?’ category, it’s a coachbuilt – the term suggesting a conversion where a large proportion of the base…

After travelling halfway across the globe, a 1954 23-Window Kombi has become the latest addition to the Bill Richardson Transport World collection in New Zealand. The early Bus was on display this year in a temporary exhibition alongside a number of other rare VWs – including a restored ’54 Barndoor Kombi (one of three right-hand-drive Barndoors on display), a ’61 Karmann Ghia convertible (just six were ever sold new in New Zealand), a collection of Beetles including an unrestored ’56 model, and a Formula Vee single-seater race car. The exhibition, which celebrated pre-1975 Volkswagens, also featured a 1974 Westfalia Bay which, believe it or not, won the Best Original trophy at the 2005 VolksWorld Show and also appeared in the first issue of VW Camper&Bus. It also won the SSVC’s…

Kenny McBride hails from St Albans in Hertfordshire and is the proud owner of this understated and oh-so-classy Camper. He told us, “I’ve been into VWs since childhood and have fond memories of my mother’s Mk1 Scirocco, which she drove for years.“ He continued, “later I had a friend at university who was really into VWs and I spent a lot of time looking through his VW magazines, which is when I decided that I’d love an air-cooled VW one day.” Back then Kenny was into Karmann Ghias. In fact, his passion for Karmann’s finest hasn’t faded, as he’s recently picked up a new project – a Lowlight Ghia. However, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here, as it’s this cool, ’73 Westy we’re interested in right now. Family planning The…

“The L555 Titian Red and L472 Beige Grey combo was only offered for the ’66 and ’67 model years” Our relationship with vintage air-cooled Volkswagens has changed drastically over the last three decades. Picture yourself in, say, 1987. Needed a Split Bus to join the first Bug Jam at Santa Pod Raceway? With some digging, you might have found a decent stock model through ads in the local paper. Who knows, it might have even worn its original paint… After all, a ’67 Type 2 was simply considered a used car in the eye of many in 1987. Few enthusiasts envisioned retaining the old, possibly faded factory paint at the time – a project car needed to be bright and shiny! Fast forward to 2020. Any surviving car from the…

Let’s face it, when the roads are salty and the weather’s cold and damp, there’s less of a temptation to venture out every weekend in your Bus. The weeks can turn to months and before you know it, your VW hasn’t been used for a few months, the battery’s dead, mould has taken residence inside and things have taken a definite backwards step. So our guide to winter storage aims to ensure you avoid the aforementioned problems if you intend to lay it up. At the same time, if there’s a break in the weather and you did fancy a winter adventure, it will still feel fresh and ready for the road. The preparation work can be as involved as you want it to be, so don’t feel as though…

You have to feel a little sorry for the fourth generation of Volkswagen’s Transporter. Launched in 1990 – so celebrating its 30th birthday this year – it was a highly significant vehicle for VW. The company has even hailed it as a ‘paradigm shift’ which, frankly, sounds more like a great title for a sci-fi movie rather than a term somebody might apply to, well, basically a Van. But you can see its point. After 6.7 million T1, T2 and T25 Transporters with their engines slung out the back, the T4 put its motor ahead of the driver. And, for good measure, it also introduced front-wheel drive, two different wheelbases and four-, five and six-cylinder engines, wrapping everything up in a handsome if somewhat conventional body. It was easily the…