More Airfix Beetles

Rupert and Bill discover that some cars (and quite a few people) just don't need water.

Park on the beach and forget about the tide coming in. A fairly quick way of filling up a Beetle with H20. It's free, too.

More exports destined for various European countries at the end of the 1940s.

Two fools set out for Tristan da Cunha, the world's remotest human habitation and a week's journey by boat from South Africa. At one time many years ago, the only cars to be found on these islands were Beetles, so Rupert and Bill are hopeful of NOS discoveries.

Stranger things have happened, but they're still fools.

The first cars exported from Germany went to Ben Pon's dealership in The Netherlands. All five cars were painted in red. Ben Pon was, of course, the man whose ideas led to the VW Transporter in 1950. A great supporter of VW/Porsche, Pon raced in immaculate silver 906 in the 1960s.

Reconditioning 25bhp Beetle engines at Wolfsburg after the War. Nothing went to waste.

Heinz Nordhoff was appointed as Volkswagen's first chief executive from 1 January, 1948, on the recommendation of Ivan Hirst. An ex-Opel executive, Hirst disliked Nordhoff for the latter was an autocrat disinclined to listen to anyone else's opinion, but recognised him as the right man for the job at that time.

Nordhoff died of a heart attack in 1968 amidst something of a financial scandal involving VW South Africa. In the same year, VW launched the Type 4 saloon, intended by Nordhoff as another Beetle replacement, but he got it wrong yet again. Beetle sales rose inexorably upwards to a peak of 1.2 million in 1971, mostly because of the success of the 917 Porsche.

The picture of the engine reconditioning brings back a few memories. I used to rebuild V8 engines as a young man. I worked for a speed and custom machine shop.

A friend gave me a 1974 Camaro for free without the engine and transmission because they blew it up. The body was respectable. That was a Wednesday. There was an automotive flea market starting on the Friday of that weekend. The Barrie flea market was huge and very well known.

I made a bet to have it running by Sunday so I could drive to a wedding 5-hours away. I bought a bare block and Corvette heads. I installed a new cam, lifters, pistons, rings, bearings, oil pump. timing chain and gears... I rebuilt the heads and did a little intake and exhaust porting. I also had to rebuild the carb, etc.

Once I had all the parts. I worked 24/7 through Friday and Saturday. By that Sunday morning I had the engine installed and almost ready to run. But the fancy, crazy expensive, over-sized, competition Hooker headers I bought had to be installed from under the car. The engine also had to be lifted slightly. Most headers go in from the top. I was devastated that I had to borrow my other friends car to get to the wedding. My wife drove while I slept in the back seat.

The silly things we try and do as kids, eh? I could never pull a double all-nighter these days without keeling over into a one-man-pile-up.

A two day event in 1984 when after not sleeping for far too long, I started hallucinating on the way home, and had to transfer driving duties to my navigator.

I suppose it's easily possible to build a quick slot version of one of these. I wonder if anyone's bothered yet.

A hasty return to air-cooling, methinks, before some Greek God of water sends a curse of flooding to the HR2 postal district and scuppers my plans for painting Beetle bodyshells.

A drawing of the prototype's dashboard used in pre War publicity material.