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here’s always a great feeling when you know it’s the right time to do something you have always wanted to do; a guilt-free feeling of ‘why not?’ combined with the morbid but realistic thought that life is just too short to wait around and wish you had just gone out there and done what you wanted and gave two fingers to those who were too afraid to go for it. We all have a wish list, let’s face it, and anyone who is into VWs probably has a pretty substantial wish list seeing as there are so many models and styles out there. It makes it hard to think that anyone has just the one car and they are happy with that. We all have a guilty pleasure if we dig deep enough, and although for most of us the restraints of time, money and basic garage space can hold that dream back, the desire is always there. Walter Jelinek, the creator of the wild beast you see here, is the owner


of The Bug Box in Weiden, Germany and before he had hit double digits in age many moons ago, his passion for wild VWs was flamed by this Baja Bug. Well, not this one, but the scaled-down radio- controlled model.


Fast-forward to a grey October day in 2009 and the phone rings in the Bug Box workshop. Walter picks up the phone to hear his friend Helge Ohmes telling him about his new passion of radio-controlled cars, and that he would love to have a Tamiya Sand Scorcher one day. Walter explained how he had a Sand Scorcher but in order to buy it he sold his beloved Revell Jeep model and his roller skates to the boy next door to get the money together. He recounted that this was a milestone in remote-controlled car history as it was the first model with a completely sealed, waterproof radio box. That meant you could run it through dirt and water without really worrying about the radio system being affected. Unlike many childhood toys that have a short life, the Sand Scorcher got used a lot by Walter, so much so that the body showed signs of wear


but he kept the suspension and radio box in good working order. Throughout the conversation one thing came to his mind time and time again – what would it be like to have a real size Sand Scorcher? – and as soon as he hung up, Walter knew this was the right time to go for it. He had to build a 1:1 Sand Scorcher! Before the guys could go ahead and build the Sand Scorcher, Walter wanted to get approval from Tamiya itself and shortly after making the enquiry Walter received a call from none other than the owner of Tamiya in Japan, who is delighted to give his blessing but has one request – to have the full size Sand Scorcher on display at the international Toy Fair in Nürnberg, Germany in February 2010, where Tamiya would be celebrating its 30th anniversary and, to celebrate this occasion, it was re-releasing its legendary Sand Scorcher model. As I said, sometimes it’s just the right time to follow your guilty pleasure and clearly this was the right time for everyone involved.


Remote Reality


For Walter, the only way to go was to build from the images on the packaging as that was the memory he had. This would have been based on a 1968 to 1970 sunroof model, so the hunt began and after looking at a few not so good Beetles he found one on www.bugnet.de – a 1968 sunroof model body that had blended in wings and a dashboard that had clearly been hacked at during its 41 years on


Bo


the man himself do it. Ladies and gents, I give you Bob Burrows: “Do you remember watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang when the father took his children out for a ride in it and they then asked what it was called? With sound of the engine in the background, he said ‘listen: Chitty, chitty, chitty, chitty’, then it backfired, bang-bang! ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – that’s what we’ll call it’. The first time I took my girls, Jasmine, Charlie and Abbie out in the Van, they asked the same question. Thinking along similar lines, I said ‘listen, can you hear the engine?’ It kind of makes a jingle jangle noise, so we called him Mr. Bo Jangles.”


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Bob is no stranger to VWs, having grown up in a household where the VW marque was king. His dad had a 1970 Panel Van for work as well as a 1971 Early Bay Camper and a 1973 Late Bay Devon. No surprise then that Bob learned to drive in a 1977 Panel Van and shortly after passing his test he treated himself to a 1978 Devon but then, as is often the case, Bob drifted away from the world of VWs and headed down the dark road of custom and modified cars, V8 Ford Pops and weekend trips to Santa Pod to watch the racing before moving on to his other passion in life – motorbikes. Realising that he had made it to 40 without killing himself on the bikes he decided to get out while the going was good, so sold his race-tuned Ducati 996 and began the hunt for a Splittie, which meant he could combine his love of VWs and custom motors.


Jangles ’67 13 Window


grave, so he ditched the Ducati and got a Dub Words: Cathal O’Toole Photos: Dan Pullen


ormally we would write the introduction to a feature but this time I can think of no better way of introducing this one than to have


Bob Burrows knew riding Superbikes was just a diesel spill away from a hospital bed or an early


Bob made a call to Adey Ward at Boxwagen in Poole, who had a 1967 13-window, belonging to a customer, up for sale. What Bob had bought was a very straight, 80 per cent original Sea Blue under Cumulus White paint with a 1776cc motor, which was pretty handy as Bob intended to use the Bus as his daily driver. This he did until May 2008, when Bob delivered it the workshops of Carl Klinkenborg’s Beetlebank (07815 024677) to have a mild restoration carried out. The Bus was extremely solid and only required a matchbox-sized patch on the front panel and the replacement of the bottom of the cargo doors. All that was required after all of the body was smoothed out was to pick the colour, and as anyone who has gone through this process will know, the colour choice can make or break the desired look.


Cocoa pops!


The Burrows family had a few ideas rolling around in their heads but when they visited the VolksWorld Show in 2007 they saw the colour for below the beltline: House of Kolor Cocoa, which was on Joe Armitage’s ’62 Beetle. Above the beltline was not so easy, as it came down to two very similar colours – the New Mini Pepper White or the New Beetle colour Harvest Moon Beige, and again, another trip to the VolksWorld Show, this time in 2009, had them drooling over Aaron Tully’s Harvest Moon Beige over Texas Brown Samba. That was that, Harvest Beige it was to be, so a quick call to Carl to confirm the paint codes and a few days later the Bus was in paint. Bob wanted a few custom touches, so he asked Carl to reverse the hinge on the first pop-out window and added a pop-out to the rear side windows so now all


66 Jan2011 volksworld.com


  Peter Noad talks to one of his followers about


prepping a daily driver for road rallies Words: Peter Noad Pics: Adrian Brannan


hen we asked Keith Miller which VW he would most like to own, he replied, “Peter Noad’s original Okrasa Rally Bug.” Keith went on to describe how he had built a car which, although not a replica of mine – his is Pearl White not Ruby Red, and it’s powered by a twin-carb 1600 instead of an Okrasa TSV 1300 – does adhere very closely to my philosophy of a VW that can compete in motorsport rallies and autotests, and still serve as a daily driver. Historic road rallying is now a big part of the current motorsport scene, in which VW drivers can compete against Minis, Ford Cortinas and Escorts, Volvo Amazons and suchlike, along muddy farm tracks and in slaloms around


cones, just like I did in the Sixties. Keith has incorporated many of the mods and tweaks I’ve written about in my books and in VolksWorld, so it was really cool to be able to chat to him about the project. Keith’s car is a ’72 1300A. “I particularly wanted to buy it because it is a rare model that I have a soft spot for,” he said. It is a later model than my 336BGP but, as the 1300A was basically a 1200 shell with blade-type bumpers and a bigger engine, it retains much of the Sixties look. It was while he was at university in 1993 Keith first became a VW owner. He acquired a 1971 Bug, inspired by seeing a neighbour’s Beetle and memories of the Herbie films he had seen as a kid. He subsequently bought a ’64 Sunroof


model, which he restored as a Cal Looker with a 1776cc engine, and which he still owns. He bought the 1300A in 2004. His intention was to keep it stock and use it as a daily driver. An MoT revealed more rust than expected and single-handed restoration took him a few years. His motto ‘if in doubt, cut it out (and weld in a new section)’ meant he replaced most of the lower six inches of bodywork, the front bulkhead, rear cross panels, heater channels, floorpans and doors. “Then, as I reached the paintjob stage, something happened to change my plans,” he said. “I bought two old books by Peter Noad – Tuning Volkswagens and VW Beetle in Motorsport, and these prompted a turning point in my project.” Keith informed me. So what about the looks?


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“A VW can compete and still serve as a daily driver”


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   volksworld.com Feb2011 69 volksworld.com 15


The HE HOLY GRAIL ’67 Beetle


A ’67 is what every VW enthusiast dreams of finding, and they’re still out there if you look hard enough Words: Mike Pye


Photos: Matt Richardson


hether you dream of owning a hard-core Cal Looker, a slammed ’n’ rimmed Resto Cal or a


100-point concours contender, the one thing we all dream of finding is that perfect base car – you know, the mythical ‘one lady owner, low mileage, unrestored’ gem that has ‘never been raced or rallied’ and never been messed with by someone else. In the days before the internet, cars like these were reasonably common. You just had to look out for the telltale signs in the lineage ads in the back of local papers - ‘two-axle rigid saloon’ in an ad for a Beetle, for example, was a dead giveaway that someone didn’t know what they were selling. All you had to do was be the first one to knock on the door with the readies. But the internet has changed all that. These days, anyone and everyone can access the adverts, it’s easy to find out the market value of a car, and consequently the bargain buys are few and far between. But every now and then we hear a story that reaffirms our hope that real honest one-owner cars are still out there waiting to be found.


Having built a 1776cc-powered ’69 Looker that was featured in VolksWorld in May 2002, but tiring


“it was almost like the car had never been used”


1500 ’67 is sometimes called the best Beetle ever, and certainly in terms of performance and driveability it was the best thing VW had done up until then. With 75,000 miles on the clock, Will’s time- warp example is still a great drive today, though he says it’s much better now he’s replaced the tyres and shocks and rebuilt the sticking brakes.


of all the time spent working on it and the negative aspects of a modified VW, 32-year-old Will Snell decided it was time to take things at a slower pace. “I had already raised the suspension back up and taken the Rivieras off the ’69, but it still had j-tubes on the exhaust and no heaters, plus I’d moved away and just wasn’t really using the car much any more. I started to think what would be really nice would be a one- or two- owner car, one that hadn’t been messed around with, or at least as close to that as I could get. But you know what adverts are like – they claim stuff like that all the time, but then you go and see it and it’s done 200,000 miles, had a new engine, a respray and everything else. “But as I was trawling eBay one day I saw this car. It was advertised as a ’66 but, the more I looked at the pictures, I could see it was actually a ’67. ‘Interesting,’ I thought. So I called the lady up who was selling it. The VW Blue car had belonged to her grandfather, who had bought it new from Allans in Spittal, on the outskirts of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and had kept the car all his life. I asked her all the usual questions – what the paint was like, what was the condition of the rubbers etc. And she just kept saying, “they’re alright, but it’s a 40-year-old car, it is what it is.” She did tell me it still had the original key ring with it, which I thought sounded promising, but I really wasn’t sure about it.”


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Mr.


u need the best basis possible... eon. Photos: Anthony Butler


the best possible Old School Cal arger


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at a crossroad. It was smashed in between the front and rear wings and not worth repairing, so I bought it for £20 to drive round the fields. I stripped it and drove it until I killed it. It took a lot of abuse and I really had fun with it. I ended up hooked on VWs. Mark Cross was brought up on custom cars as his father, John, was a rodder and had friends were into VWs. He told us, “My father started building Hot Rods in 1977, so I’ve never known anything other than cars. His good friend, Kev Rooney took me for a ride in his Cal Look ’67 in the mid ‘80s, and took me to Bug Jam in his ’63 (Fiat Adriatic blue with black EMPI 5s) in ’89 or ’90. The ’67 was the first tastefully modified Beetle I had seen, but the ’62 was what confirmed me as VW guy.”


 We can remember the ’62 very well ourselves,


e all have our own reasons for getting hooked on VWs. For me it was down to a friend who had a ’68 1500 which had a car drive into the passenger side


and for those who’ve got every issue of VolksWorld, it was featured in Issue Number 9 way back in 1989. Having become well and truly hooked, Mark went on to start a project, it was a Porsche Speedster replica. Perhaps he fancied being Tom Cruise in Top Gun? Whatever the reason, the project was missing two elements: An engine, and Mark, as he was working in the USA, so car project work had come to a halt, but thankfully these factors also helped lay the foundations for the future...


Mental Oval-load!


While in the USA, Mark picked up copies of Hot VWs magazine and that’s when everything changed. “I picked up a copy of Hot VWs to aid my search for a motor for my dormant Speedster project,” he said. “And in this copy was a tough- looking 12-second Dove blue ’55 Oval owned and built by Buddy Hale. After fingering the pages of the article for the next couple of hours I thought,


oh well, maybe one day, and carried on looking through the adverts for engine builders. My job in the USA soon finished and I returned to the UK with my new motor for the Speedster and big plans of getting it finished.” But virtually as soon as he arrived back he was sent away again with work, this time to Norway. “My firm had me on the next plane, and the Speedster was back in mothballs. After a couple of years in Norway it was becoming clear I was going to be here for a while, and the Speedster was becoming a disappearing memory as I was thinking more and more of the Cal Look Oval. I decided if I wanted a nice car back at home I was going to have to find the nicest complete car I could and get somebody else to throw a big motor in the back for me.” Sounds like the perfect plan to us – start off with the best car possible and you’re off to a winner. But it didn’t prove that easy to find the right car! “After searching unsuccessfully for


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