1954 Oval window Beetles
- Friday, 13 June 2008
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UK right hand drive Ovals don't exactly grow on trees so when one turned up on an internet forum looking rather swish we decided to pursue it further.
The owners name is James Waller and through a series of conversations we discovered that his '54 Oval was pretty much original save for a few obvious modifications. He had plans to re-upholster the interior and touch up the paint but the car was that good and the paint so deep that we found it hard to believe it was original anyway.
It goes to show, even with the UK climate as damp as it is when a car is stored properly and looked after, there is no reason why it can't remain looking as good as it did 54 years ago.
James was quite taken aback when we asked if he was up for a feature, in fact he even emailed our main address to see if it was a genuine request and not some Internet goon yanking his chain!
On discovering we were the real deal he feared that the photos on the 'net where doing the car more justice than it deserved. Modest or what? A few more photos were sent our way and we were loving what we saw - we even got to see the car in the flesh and were equally impressed - it was all systems go.
It was during our talks that we discovered that James had bought the Oval of his friend Nick Gatt. "I bought the car off Nick a year ago", explains James, "I had waited for the day to buy it a long time as I had always likes the car during the eight years that Nick had owned it" - this was when we also learnt that Nick had come into possession of another UK right hand drive 1954 Oval.
As luck would have it around the same time our feature discussions with James were taking place we had a call from Simon Emery at the Paintbox telling us about an original RHD '54 Oval that a customer owned. He left a name and number - it was of course the number for Nick.
The cogs started to turn, we got on the blower and a double feature was born.
For the full story check out the August 2008 issue of VolksWorld magazine. On sale on 13 June and then available through back issues.
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