How long does it take to build a show-winning Beetle? One year? Five years? For Giles Marchant, the process took a little longer…

Giles is what I’d call a typical British VW guy. He got hooked on VWs as a teenager after seeing a steady procession of them pass his house on their way to the first ever Bug Jam. He’s spent more years than he cares to remember rebuilding a Beetle at home on his own and has had the usual setbacks along the way – “a lot of which was down to plain old bad planning and lack of knowledge, but also a lot of bad luck”, as he put it. But, almost 20 years after borrowing a few hundred sheets off his mum to buy his first Beetle in 1990 he’s finally achieved his goal.

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