Home Brew - Manx Buggy

It's not often an interview with a feature car owner starts with the words, "I didn't want to build this car at all", but those were the first words Dan Peyto said to me as we settled down in my local for a chat over a pint and a packet of peanuts. "It's the first Volkswagen I've ever owned," he continued, "but what I really wanted was a Beetle." Understandably, these comments piqued my interest, for that's not something you hear too often these days from someone in their mid-30s who has turned up in a BMW. So what do you make of the Volkswagen scene? I asked, interested how things looked these days to an ‘outsider'. "It's a bit cliquey, but I suppose you'd expect that. I couldn't believe what I was seeing at the VolksWorld Show though. The standard of cars on display was amazing and everyone seemed to know each other, though there did seem to be a lot of people paying professional companies to build their cars for them. At the kit car shows people don't want to tell you how they've done things, at VW shows they want to give you things!
"I never expected to win anything at the show though. I'm not belittling myself but, to be honest, a Buggy is easy to build. There's no bodywork to do, and not much interior either. I only entered it because I wanted to see if we'd done it ‘right'. When my name was read out I thought there must have been a mistake"
What did you have before this car then, I asked, and what attracted you to a VW? "I've always had company cars, but I had a Caterham 7 as a toy. I just fancied a Beetle, I thought it would be a bit of a laugh. I got fed up going sideways, so thought I'd have something slow and cool instead. The one I bought turned out to be a complete shed though..."
What followed for Dan was basically the same experience many of us had when we were teenagers. The car he bought was a '70 Beetle that had been done in the style of a UK Cal Looker. It looked okay from the outside but turned out to be rotten as a pear underneath, which meant a drastic change of plan was necessary. It also meant Dan had a lot to learn, but he had a willing accomplice in the task in his good mate Chris Bennington, someone Dan couldn't thank enough for all the help he gave him right through the project.
"When we discovered how rotten the Beetle was, Chris said, ‘let's do a Buggy'. I didn't want a Buggy though, I'd just got rid of an open-top two seater!
"The good thing was this was never going to be my everyday car," he continues, "so there was no timescale for the project."

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

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