Peppermint Dream - Ex VolksWorld feature car

Fri, 11 Apr 2008
Add Comment

Back in the early Nineties I owned and cherished 'Peppermint Dream', a '66 Beetle featured in the February '91 VolksWorld. The car was built by Tony Dunham and won countless trophies at the time. It was seriously low, ran colour-coded EMPI five-spokes, a fully chromed and detailed 1641cc with twin Dell'Ortos, solenoid doors and a slick interior with ergo pump seats. It was the bomb, and so of its time. In fact, 'Peppermint Dream' inspired myriad copycat cars. I bought the car after seeing it at the 1994 VolksWorld show and kept it in top class condition. I sold it some years later to finance my Split Screen Bus, but the people that became the new owners drove it into the ground. For 12 long years it sat rotting in a field until and a guy named Karl McCarthy, aka 'Karlito', entered the equation. He loved the car from back in the day and knew he could save it. I have never seen anyone take such a wreck and rebuild it. His blog is some 50 pages long on the Volkszone Readers' Rides thread (www.volkszone.co.uk/VZi/showthread.php?t=334451) with some 40,000 plus viewings. To say the car was on its last legs when he got it must be the biggest understatement you could make. Apart from the roof, not including the gutters, the whole thing was rebuilt, floor up, and repainted with a two-pack mix that's a secret to this day.
Anyway here are some before and after shots.
Spencer Herbert