Cross-country runner - 1959 Lowlight Ghia
Built in Germany, customised in California and now being driven in France, this too cool Lowlight sure gets about
When we all saw the photos of this car in the office we all began to drool. It was built by Dave ‘Pip’ Pipoly who operates a VW restoration and build service he calls Custom Compound, or The Compound for short.
“A good bro of mine, T-Fab [a French ex-pat otherwise known as Fabian] was telling me he had a friend in France, Richard Luquet, that wanted a Lowlight built, similar to a silver ’57 I’d built previously, and would I be interested in doing the work?
“My response was hell yeah! So the hunt was on for a car to start with. But most of the ones I looked at were overpriced rust buckets. Then, I remembered, shit, I know where a nice lowlight is...”
The car Pip suddenly remembered belonged to his good buddy Frank Estrada a.k.a. Frank The Bank, so that’s who he called. “Hey bro, you still have that ’59 Ghia? You wanna sell it? Yup? Cool,” went the conversation. Now, all Pip had to do was see if Richard was up for a black car, rather than a silver one. It wasn’t that Pip was precious about the colour the car ended up, rather that the restoration of the ’59 had begun several years previous, and it had been in paint for a couple of years now. “Richard was a little reserved at first,” Pip continues, “but I said, picture this – black Lowlight, red interior, black headliner, black carpet, blacked out engine, chrome ‘n’ detailed Fuchs... Bam! The deal was done.”
That night Pip drove over to Frank’s house and loaded the Ghia up. As well as being painted, it already had a built Rancho Pro Street transmission in it, a three-inch narrowed beam, drop spindles and four wheel disc brakes, but no motor, no interior and needed the rest of the car re-assembling.
When it came to the former, Pip called up Stacey at Old Speed in Paramount, CA and gave him the specs for the long block he wanted assembled, while a call to West Coast Classics had the interior bits he needed in a delivery van and heading across town to his workshop. The final piece in the jigsaw was the wheels. While Richard could be swayed on the overall colour choice, the one thing he was adamant about was that the Ghia should roll on Fuchs, so Pip picked out a set of his own 4.5s and a pair of genuine sixes and sent them over to his main man, Al Reed, for painting in chrome effect paint.
With all that lot going on, he could do what he likes doing best, and get out in the workshop. First, all the detailed suspension was removed and the body sent over on a frame to club member Henry Marchena’s shop, VW Classic Restorations, to fix a couple of chips in the paint that had occurred over the years it had been sitting. The guys there then re-shot the deep gloss black, clear coated it and buffed it so Pip had the perfect base from which to start re-assembly.
This wasn’t to be just a straight off-the-shelf assembly though, oh no, Pip had a few tricks up his sleeve that he wanted to put into this car – things such as the engine ancillary details were, he felt, crucial to the overall look of the car, so much of the ensuing time was spent fabricating one-off components, or stripping, detailing and re-assembling others. Ever tried taking a carb apart, painting, chroming and polishing everything, then re-assembling it so it
still works? That’s no five-minute job. The same went for the distributor, while other parts such as the one-off plug lead conduit, alternator backing plate and firewall were all shot through with holes before being re-chromed or painted.
For the interior, Pip came good on his promise of black on black, with just the seats in red as a stand out feature and, together with his right-hand man at The Compound, Mike ‘Chip’ Davis, they installed the lot themselves.
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