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DOUBLE-SIDED PULL-OUT POSTER
WITH MONTHLY EVENT GUIDE!
PROJECT 1 IS DANBURY MOTORCARAVANS’ BRAND NEW, RACE-INSPIRED PARTY BUS!
DAMN FINE
PLANET ULTRA: CANADA: FUEL-INJECTED OLD-SCHOOL ’LOOKER USA: HOT VWs DRAG DAY OVERVIEW BELGIUM: GROUND-SCRAPING RAT BUG
SLAMMED912 NARROWED AND DROPPED CLASSIC PORSCHE 912
£3.99 CAN$11.95 US$9.25 March 2012 www.ultravw.com
PLUS: LUST FOR RUST SHOP TOUR STATUS VW BARNDOOR RESTO PT4 TURBOCHARGED TYPE 3 DRAG CAR
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PROJECT1 When your business is high-class Camper conversions, sometimes you just need a break – time to indulge yourself and try something new. That’s exactly how Project 1 came about... Words: Paul Knight Photos: Gwynn Clark
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ampers, Campers, Campers... cool as they may be, if they’re your bread and butter and you deal with countless pastel-coloured variations on the theme on a daily basis, sometimes you just need to get out there and try something a little different. And that’s exactly what the highly-skilled team at Danbury MotorCaravans has done with this vehicle – an exercise in just what can be achieved with a little imagination and a touch of fun. Project 1 was assembled in 2011 as a kind of demonstrator-cum-concept vehicle for the business. The guys decided it was time to put together a more ‘hardcore’ street Bus... the kind of thing that would most certainly stand out in a crowd. Starting with a brand new Brazilian Bay window Kombi, the guys first set about sorting the bodywork. The
exterior is actually pretty much factory spec, with a couple of minor exceptions, namely the engine lid, which has had the number plate holes filled and smoothed over, the rear bumper, which was dropped and notched to fit around the custom exhaust tail pipe and a rear view camera, which was fitted just above the tailgate. Yes, it may have been brand new, but the decision was made to repaint the entire Bus to achieve a ‘better than new’ finish. The black and white hues chosen are both from the current VW range, whilst the one-off orange and black vinyl graphics were designed in-house, and certainly draw the eye to this wild ride. What followed was a good deal of colour-coding and detailing. The front radiator grille, upper grille and headlight rims were all painted white, while the handles and bumpers received a coat of gloss black. Only the
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NOTCHBAD! Considering how few Notchbacks there are on the road, it’s never ceased to amaze us how many have ended up on the drag strip! The latest is Scott Oliver’s bad to the bone turbocharged terror… Words: Keith Seume Photos: Paul Knight
W
hen was the last time you saw a Volkswagen Type 3 Notchback in use? Indeed, when was the last time you saw a Notchback, period? We bet it was in the concours display at a Volkswagen show or – and this is what is so crazy – on the drag strip! For some reason – partly aerodynamics, partly just to be different – VW’s rather humble three-box family saloon has carved itself a place in recent drag race history. Back in the late 1960s and ’70s, you’d never have seen a Notchback on the track, and even in the 1980s, when the PRA and VWDRC series were really taking off on either side of
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the Atlantic, you’d rarely, if ever, see a Notchback take to the staging lanes. But all that changed in the 1990s with the arrival on the scene of cars like Ron Lummus’s ‘Bugpack Bullet’ Pro-Stocker in California, and Jolly Jim Warner’s streetdriven Notch over here. Since those days, there have been several new Notches taking to the track, the latest in the UK being Scott Oliver’s turbocharged terror shown here. Scott recalls when he first came across the car: ‘I bought it about four years ago from a nice chap near Salisbury. It was in a job-lot of vehicles advertised in the free ads for which I paid £9000. These included a 1965 RHD double-door Split-screen, three early
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Words: Paul Knight Photos: Kevve.be media
BAD-ASS!
What makes a water-cooled enthusiast take time out from his usual waxed-to-the-max late-model VWs and turn his attention to a rough and ratty, air-equipped Bug? Paul Knight finds out...
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ys Diëgo is a 24-year-old metalworker from Heerstert in Belgium. He is also a dedicated VW petrolhead with a past history to shame even the most dedicated water-cooled VW fanatics. When we asked him about his previous history of modified rides, he smiled and reeled off the following list; a Mk3 Golf, some Mk2s, a Passat estate, Vento, Caddy (Mk2), three Audi A4s (B5 and B8 and a B8 Avant), a Passat 3C, an Audi A8 and his current daily driver, a Mk5 Golf! With such a colourful and comprehensive
history of customised water-pumpers, the decision to ‘go air-cooled’ came as quite a shock to his friends and family. Nys told us, ‘I’m a member of VW Club Charly’s, which has both water- and aircooled divisions’. He continued, ‘The club was putting on an air-cooled only meeting so I decided it was time to build a ride of my own and something totally different to my previous vehicles’. There was one slight problem though – the event was only a month or so away! Therefore, no time was wasted, and the search began in earnest. And, believe it or
not, the perfect project was located almost right away and to really sweeten the deal, it had just been pulled from a barn less than 10 miles from his home! Nys told us, ‘It was perfect – flat paint and perfect patina up top and rock solid underneath... it just needed slamming, and lots of it!’. The car is a ’67 1300 model with its original 1300cc motor and less than 77,000km on the odometer. As you can see from the pictures, the body is completely stock and exactly as it left the factory... well, perhaps a little worse for wear, but ’factory’
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Words: Keith Seume Photos: www.gac-bespoke.com
ULTRA912 Cars don’t come much cleaner – or cooler – than Andy Rice’s stunning 1966 Porsche 912. It’s a classic Porsche with a hint of Resto-Cal. It’s a traffic-stopping, head-turning masterpiece
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ou can’t deny there’s something very special about an early Porsche, especially one of the pre-1974 – ‘pre-impact bumper’ – 911s or 912s. There’s a certain purity of line that was lost when they all started sprouting wider wings and spoilers. Andy Rice, who owns this beauty, has been into Volkswagens for over 20 years, having owned several Beetles and Buses. The move into the world of Porsche was ‘a natural progression’, to use his own words. He bought the car in 2001 from his friend Mark Pugh – or, more correctly, swapped a 1968 Camper for it – who had imported it from California in 2000. It came with a set of Sprint Stars fitted at the time. ‘I’ve always loved early Porsches and wanted to do a resto-cal style one,’ says Andy. He took us back over the history of the car: ‘The Porsche was originally sold in Santa Clara, California. It was Gulf Blue and had chromed 4.5J wheels fitted. Being a 1966 model, it has a three-dial dashboard and a four-speed gearbox, and is fitted with the diagonal “912” script on the engine lid. ‘When I got the car, it had been painted
red and had a black interior in vinyl. I lowered it slightly and drove it as it was for a year. It was OK, but starting to show its age, so I garaged it with a full restoration in mind.’ But as so often happens, life got in the way and the project was put on hold: ‘I got side tracked for six years after buying my first property, but when the work was done on the house I started to look for a workshop to work on the car. Luckily a friend had recently moved his plumbing business and still had the old workshop empty, so he let me use it for a year.’ Now that sounds like our kind of friend! ‘I was in that workshop every night and most weekends for 14 months until the car was ready,’ says Andy, who clearly has more than the average talent when it comes to this kind of thing. ‘I’m a professional body and paint man and I have worked in high-class body shops for 24 years, I had my own business for 10 years, restoring air-cooled VWs and in 1996 I built a 19-window 1965 Split-screen Bus for a friend that went on to win Best of Show at every event it entered – it was featured in several magazines. I now work for Jaguar Cars and I prepare new
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40-LOVE Believe it or not, this wild road/rally car is actually based on a Beetle chassis. James Hale checks out Gary Candy’s Bonito kit Words: James Hale Photos: Paul Knight
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e-bodying a VW Beetle in the 1960s often meant turning it into a Buggy and heading for the dunes. Very quickly, though, builders wanting to convert a pensionable Bug into something more stylish for road use started demanding kit cars with more finesse. One of the first kit manufacturers to see the trend was Californian-based Fiberfab, who designed a Ford GT40 sports coupé replica called the Avenger. A further refinement of the VW-based kit led to the neat FT Bonito, a well-proportioned and tasteful alternative to expensive sportscars of the day. Such was the success of the kit that production licences were granted to manufacturers in Sweden and Germany. It was in the latter – the very home of the VW
Beetle – that the kit further developed under the auspices of Fiberfab Karosserie in Stuttgart. Not to be left out, British company ACM in Poole imported, and then subsequently manufactured, the kit between 1981-83 before new owners AED developed it into the Seraph kit on a spaceframe chassis with Ford power. Fast-forward to 1999 and garage owner Gary Candy, from nearby Parkstone in Dorset, was one of the lucky few to find an original German-made car languishing in a garden. The heavily-weathered glassfibre bodyshell was sat on a ’63 Beetle but re-registered on a ‘Q’ plate when converted in ’86. The car ran a Morris Minor engine adapted to the VW gearbox, but the vendor kept that and Gary slipped in a 1600 Ford Crossflow engine instead. A further seven years of work on-and-off were required to
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EIGHTH-MILE
PARADISE
Last year marked the 10th season of the CB Performance-sponsored HotVWs Drag Day and, as has been the tradition, two race meetings were held at Irwindale’s eighth-mile track. Stephan Szantai recalls the standout cars and race highlights from both the March and October meetings... Words & Photos: Stephan Szantai
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ack in 2002, Southern California rekindled its love affair with the HotVWs Drag Day, which had disappeared from the Volkswagen scene in 1983, the year Orange County International Raceway –
distance. Californians had been competing over the accepted quarter-mile strips for decades, but Irwindale Raceway could only offer an eighth of a mile... Funnily, I had forgotten about these negative remarks until Keith Seume brought
“Local enthusiasts overwhelmingly welcomed the return of this iconic event” its home base – drew to a close. Local enthusiasts overwhelmingly welcomed the return of this iconic event. Yet, a number of drag racers and spectators voiced their discontent about an important feature of Drag Day: the track’s
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up the subject, during last October’s event – Uncle Keith commented about the fact that 1/8th-mile ETs seemed rather foreign to him. Memory flooded back and suddenly I remembered the commotion within my small group of friends; one of them, who shall
1. Racing aside, the
9. Travion Watson on
area behind the main
his way to a strong
car show welcomes
pass in Outlaw Turbo,
what is arguably
the fastest class at the
Southern California’s
HotVWs Drag Day
largest VW swap meet
10. You’ve seen it in
2. Dove Blue must
Ultra VW before (all
surely have been one of
dressed!) This is Roger
the most popular
Crawford’s fantastic
colours for early,
Outlaw Turbo Ghia,
commercial-model
which relies on a
Type 2s! We dig the
nitrous bottle rather
slammed ‘54 Kombi
than a turbocharger
belonging to Johnny
(competitors can
Jimenez – a member of
choose to run NOS over
the well-known
a turbo, if preferred)
‘Barndoor Mafia’
11. Scott Kelley
3. Rumour has it that
entered the Super
Sal Scolaro has in
Stock class with his ’69
excess of $35,000-
Fastback, which he has
worth of accessories
raced since the ’80s.
bolted to his ‘66
This car was a Sport
sedan... And that’s not
Compact NHRA record
counting the cool
holder in 2001
vintage trailer in tow!
12. Mike Lawless has
4. Randy Carlson (of
won countless races
Oldbug.com fame)
with his tough-looking
turned up with this
’65 Ghia. With fat
sweet ’66 Bug – the
slicks, this methanol-
100,000th Bug to roll
injected 2332cc Ghia
off the Emden-based
launches real-hard!
VW assembly line!
13. Tasteful pastel
5. Type 3? 412? Nope –
colour, dechromed
this is a Brasilia!
shell, fully polished
Volkswagen produced
Porsche alloys... We dig
over a million of these
the 1980s-styling of
between 1973 and
this convertible, which
1982, yet only a
was entered in the
handful ever made
‘ladies-only’ Powder
their way to the USA
Puff category
6. Take a look at the
14. DKP member Jim
Type 2 taillights and
Kurlinski owns a couple
large-diameter wheels
of fast street Bugs,
on this turbo buggy – it
including this
was registered in the
handsome ’66 ’looker,
T2 class (8.59-9.99
which he drove to
second bracket)
victory in the T1 class
7. That’s John Meade
(8.58-sec and quicker
wrenching on his
ETs) at the first 2011
Outlaw Turbo ’62 Bug,
Drag Day meeting
which he occasionally
15. Japanese drag
drives on the street...
legend and Type 3 guru,
(Yes, this car is
Shin Mukai, raced his
licensed and insured!)
2442cc-powered ’62
His best ET over the
Notch, which delivered
quarter-mile is a mind-
an impressive 285bhp
blowing 9.45-seconds,
on engine-builder Jack
with a terminal speed
Sacchette’s dyno!
of 145mph!
16. Looking cool and
8. Karl Koppenhaver’s
powered by a potent
2276cc, turbocharged
2007cc/48IDA motor,
’68 Bug was built with
Don Metz’s ’68
help of Ron Lummus
Cabriolet (a DKP II
Racing and was
member) first appeared
awarded Runner-up in
in this guise at Bug-In
the Outlaw Turbo class
31 (way back in 1983!)
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Words & Photos: Stephan Szantai
TEAM WORK
Located in the Southwest corner of Canada, the city of Vancouver is home to several talented – make that very talented – VW builders. They often join forces to wrench on publicly-acclaimed project cars, such as this Granada Red ’60 sedan. Its construction also heavily involved the owners, Mike Stacey and his twin sons…
T
he process of assembling the Volkswagen of your dreams can easily turn into a nightmare, if you aren’t surrounded by skilful professionals. Sure, you can build, say, a Cal Look Bug if you live in
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Alaska; but your job will be much easier if you call Fullerton home, for instance. This community located in Orange County houses a variety of VW shops; you can thereby look over the shoulder of many talented specialists as your project car begins
to take shape. In a few minutes, one could travel from an engine builder (Roger Crawford at Heads Up for example), to a gearbox guru (how about Der Transaxle?), to a respected upholsterer (West Coast Classic comes to mind).
Still a fairly unusual choice, the Flat-4 Enkei rims simply look terrific on any high-performance VW
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Right: The beige upholstery and Wolfsburg West carpet set contrast beautifully against the L650 Granada Red paint Far right: Retrosound manufactures these modern radios, inspired by vintage models and fitting 1958-67 Beetle dashboards like a glove
To the untrained eye, this might appear like just another nice interior, yet a few smart details make it quite unique...
“And let’s not forget upholstery genius Gary Economy (his blue ’67 Beetle graced our May 2007 issue!), together with Darren Krewenchuck, who certainly knows a thing or two about hot Volkswagen engines” March 2012 7
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OR
SINK
SCHWIM
Paul Bussey gets up close and personal with Mike Foster’s fabulous and freshly restored 1943 Type 166 Schwimmwagen Words & Photos: Paul Bussey
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estoring a Second World War vintage VW Type 166 4x4 amphibious Schwimmwagen isn’t your typical run of the mill Volkswagen restoration project. Owner Mike Foster wasn’t in a position, or experienced enough to carry out the work himself, so this was entrusted to specialists. Even then it proved to be a time consuming undertaking, often frustrating, with irritating teething problems, but perseverance paid dividends, and was ultimately most rewarding. While the Schwimmwagen may only be a relatively small vehicle, looking through the album of photos showing the various stages of restoration, it was clear a huge amount of work was required. Military vehicle enthusiast Mike Foster was thoroughly imbued with owning and driving his Ford GPW Jeep to shows, something that he’d enjoyed doing for the past 21 years. However, when attending the 50th Anniversary D-Day celebrations at Sainte-Marie-aux-Anglaise, in Normandy, France, a convoy of military vehicles drove into the town, and amongst the vehicles Mike spotted a VW Type 166 Schwimmwagen. It was one of life’s defining moments for him; he’d never seen a Schwimmwagen before (meaning swimming car) but he fell in love with it, and knew he simply just had to own one! Developed by Porsche around the basic Kübelwagen running gear, produced by Volkswagen and Porsche, with bodies made by Ambi Budd in Berlin, Schwimmwagen were popular with both the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS during WW2, though in reality they were rarely used in the water. Upon returning home to the UK, Mike soon sold his Jeep and started to look around for a Schwimmwagen, but unbeknown to him, at the time, they weren’t that readily available! He placed wanted advertisements in several different magazines, including Classic Military Vehicle Magazine, but it would be two years before he eventually received a reply! The vendor, John Fletcher, was selling his 1943 Schwimmwagen due to ill health. It wasn’t in a roadworthy condition, but it was 30 per cent restored. The vehicle had been discovered by John in a derelict state in the back garden of a house in Holland. He then purchased it and brought it back to the UK. Mike travelled down to Surrey to take a look at the part-restored project. John Fletcher had entrusted a restorer of German vehicles to take on the project for him, who in turn had a company called Metal Magic tackle the restoration of the bodywork. Mike liked what he saw, and did a deal, whereby the remainder of the work would be completed by the restorer. Around seven months later Mike received a letter from the restorer stating that he’d never attempted the restoration of a Schwimmwagen before and didn’t feel entirely competent to proceed any further, but knew a man that could!
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