The Green Hornet – ’62 Microbus

The months leading up to the VolksWorld Show are a great time for us here on the magazine. It's when we get sneak previews of some of the best VWs in the country under construction and learn just what people have been up to in garages, driveways and workshops around the country over the previous year. And so it was the day a couple of pictures of this Kandy Apple Green Bus landed on our desks, courtesy of Andy Raw at TSR Engine Conversions in Suffolk. It wasn't finished at the time, but already we could see it was going to be something a bit special, and completely home-built too, so we were even more keen to see it for real when it turned up on the weekend of the show.
We'd not previously heard of its owner, Howard Vincent from Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, and this wasn't surprising as this is his first foray into modified VWs. "I've been into cars all my life. I started working in car bodywork at 15 but packed that up a while ago. I was never really into VWs, I'm a modern day car man, but some of the VW boys around Mansfield dragged me round a few shows with them and I knew I could take one to a higher level... and I have.
"I really wanted to do a Crew Cab, but then this Bus turned up and it was just too good to turn down." In a sea of similar Split Screen Buses, you might wonder what he felt was so special about this one, but it'll soon become clear. For a start it's a proverbial one-owner Bus - well, almost. The first owner, an American gentleman, ordered the standard Microbus in '62 and went and collected it from Wolfsburg on 2 February 1963, paying the princely sum of 1,525 American dollars for it. He then drove it straight to a camper interior specialist in Germany and had a basic camping interior fitted, before setting off on a road trip that took him right through Europe and eventually back home to America. Over the next 42 years he travelled all over the world in the Bus, from London to Malaysia to South Africa and beyond, keeping a meticulous record of all the work that was done on the Bus in all the countries he passed through.

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

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