'54 Barndoor Van

There's nothing quite like that feeling when the pieces fall into place as planned and when it came to the Big Bang Camper&Bus Show at Santa Pod over the weekend over 25-26 April, that's exactly what happened. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here as the story started a long time before April just gone, in fact it started in Wolfsburg, Germany 55 years ago, when this Type 2 rolled off the production line and was dispatched to its first owner, a clothing company who used it to carry material for 13 years. During this time it did an annual average of 2,103 miles, but from 1966 onwards it sat in a warehouse until 2006, when it was sold to a VW enthusiast. At this stage it had still only covered 44,000 kilometres (27,341 miles).
Tom Gotta, of Wheelerdealer in Frankfurt, was asked by one of his customers if he knew of anyone who wanted a Barndoor. Of course, Tom was interested straight away and asked for more information.
Now at this stage we should mention that Tom and his best friend and partner in all things VW, Stefan Bettzüge, aka Präsi, have a bit of a fetish for five-bolt Sprint Star wheels. Well, actually not a bit of a fetish, a lot of a fetish! They've been collecting them for years and have, well, far too many. You may recall the award-winning grey Split Screen Single Cab at the VolksWorld Show a few years ago, which had a pick-up bed absolutely loaded with Sprint's - well, that was Präsi's! But although they buy them, they don't sell them - once they've got them, they're not going anywhere. The reason I am telling you this is about to become evident.
Tom and Präsi went to check out the Barndoor and they liked what they saw very much. The guy selling it knew the score with the Sprint Star stash, but had a Barndoor-shaped ace up his sleeve: He told them the only way they were getting the Bus was if they handed over 10,000 euros and a set of four Sprints. He had them both by the sphericals, but they liked it! So the deal was done (and it wasn't like they didn't still have more Sprint Stars than anyone else in the world anyway).
Once they got the old girl home, they put on some old-school disco, Tom opened some Apfelwine and they let their minds go to work. The idea they came up with was frankly ridiculous. They decided, rather than restore this rare low-mileage Van to show quality, they'd turn it into the fastest Barndoor Split Screen in the world. Yes, like we said: ridiculous. But at the same time, a brilliant plan!

For the full story on this car make sure you pick up a copy of the August 2009 issue of VolksWorld

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