Steve Hart's 1965 Split Bus

The Marmite Bus

Like the pungent yeast-based spread, you'll
either love this Bus or hate it, but you'll definitely
 want to know more about it

It was only supposed to be done as a bit of a laugh," says Steve Hart of his wild custom Bus that the assembled judges deemed good enough to win one of the coveted Top 20 awards at this year's VolksWorld Show. And for those who think it's all about who you know and how much you've spent, think again, for no one knows who Steve is (his words, not ours) and he's spent less than 10k on the finished Bus, including a 'built' motor, full custom interior and air-ride suspension. Okay, so he pulled in a few favours to get it finished and used the renowned Surrey 'barter system' to great effect, but when you consider that you're hard pressed to buy a Split Bus in need of total restoration for 10k alone these days, that's no mean feat. It helped that Steve only paid £2,500 for the Bus in the first place of course, and that he did the vast majority of the work himself on the driveway outside his house, but what he saved in outlay he more than made up for in the amount of work he's put into it. "This guy had brought two Buses in from South Africa and basically took all the good bits off one and put all the crap bits on the other - I got the bad one!" he laughs. So what prompted you to turn it into a full custom, I asked? "I've had all sorts of different cars over the years and I've always liked cutting stuff about, but people don't really seem to do that with Buses these days, so I thought why not? Also, I wanted to do it as a bit of a reaction to all the people who think you have to have a Samba to have anything."




For the full story check out the August 2008 issue of VolksWorld magazine. On sale on 11 July and then available through back issues.

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