Time Machine – ’72 1200 Beetle

Giles is what I'd call a typical British VW guy. He got hooked on VWs as a teenager after seeing a steady procession of them past his house in Bedfordshire on their way to the first ever Bug Jam. He's grown up on a diet of Billabug, Homer and Beetle Bash, has spent more years than he cares to remember rebuilding a Beetle at home on his own and has had the usual setbacks along the way - "a lot of which was down to plain old bad planning and lack of knowledge, but also a lot of bad luck", as he put it. More on the luck bit later. But, almost 20 years after borrowing a couple of hundred sheets off his mum to top up his hard-earned funds and buy his first Beetle in 1990 at the age of 17, he's finally achieved his goal. So, for all of those of you who think show cars, or whatever you want to call the cars we showcase in this way here in VolksWorld, are beyond your scope, or only for people with all the tools and the money, read on, and be inspired.
Being in his late 30s now means Giles has seen the British VW scene mature and change beyond all measure in the process. Unsurprisingly then, having started building a car in the early '90s, his own ideas for how his car should look have also evolved, to the point that Giles is more likely to criticise his car now than stand back and bask in its reflected glory.
"Prices for Beetles were sky high in 1990 and you struggled to get a scrap one for £500 then," he recalls. But before the internet and before everyone decided they had to have Ovals, Splits or Ragtops, you bought what you could find locally, and in Giles' case that was a "pretty ropey" 1972 Standard 1200 in what would probably now be called ‘'70's retro' Brilliant Orange, for which he paid the not insignificant sum of £800. You drove it like that, pored over the magazines and the cars you saw at shows, planned what you were going to do, maybe changed one or two easy bits - often to make it look like an earlier car - realised you couldn't afford to or didn't know how to do what you really wanted to do and then found what money you did have all went on welding when your pride and joy failed its next MoT, which it invariably did. That's just the way it was.

For the full story on this car make sure you pick up a copy of the July 2010 issue of VolksWorld

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