In the days before the World Wide Web and internet forums, we used to get all our information from books and magazines. And if you were into custom Beetles in the early to mid-'80s in the UK, that principally consisted of the occasional article in Custom Car or Street Machine and, if you were lucky, flicking through some back issues of Hot VWs or VW Trends in the old German Car Company shop in Hadleigh, Essex. Few people were getting subscriptions to US magazines back then, VolksWorld hadn't arrived and the VW scene as we know it had yet to happen.
But in 1986 that all changed when Colin Burnham published Air-Cooled Volkswagens and a generation of prospective Beetle customisers grew up clutching it to their collective breast. While it was little more than a collection of high-quality holiday snaps taken on a trip to So Cal in the early '80s, to that generation of fledgling VW customisers it was the bible, for in it, in glorious technicolor, were dozens of hot VWs in every style and colour imaginable, and all a world away from what the majority of us here in the UK had previously seen - unless you lived in Southend, of course, where the handful of UK cars that made it into - and onto the cover of - the book came from. Ask anyone who grew up in that era and they'll have a favourite car in the book and, undoubtedly for some, it will be this very car here. It may not necessarily be the one that did it for you but, in a similar way to how that book inspired us, this car was just as inspirational to a young American audience when it appeared in print for the first time in 1984.

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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