78 1968 CUSTOM DELUXE MICROBUS.www.volkswagencamper.co.uk
1968 CUSTOM DELUXE MICROBUS.t caught the eye of the
impressionable young
Ian Hawken and he
bought the mag. “I
was hooked, and from then on my
parents used to buy it for me every
month. When I was 16 they bought
me an orange 70’s Beetle from a
local salvage yard that had had
an engine fire. My dad spent a bit
of time playing about with it and
getting it running but I gradually
lost interest in it. Time went on and
my attention turned to Fords. I had
a string of XR2’s and RS Turbos but
really I wanted another aircooled.
Fast forward to 2010 and I saw
an ad on Volkszone for a Mk 1 GP
buggy project. I began a complete
restoration which was nearly
finished when in 2012 we bought
our first house and needed money,
so the buggy had to go. A couple of
years later I won an early bay panel
on eBay, however I soon realisedthat it needed far more work than
I had the time for, so I moved it on
in exchange for a nice LHD ‘67 Cal
look bug which I used for a couple
of years. I loved finally having an
aircooled VW on the road. Early in
2017 we decided to look for another
early bay so the Beetle was sold and
the hunt for a bus was on.
“We looked at a few bays before
buying this one. We viewed a couple
locally and travelled up to Wales to
see a bus that I liked, but my wife
Sam wasn’t so keen. A few weeks
later I was at my parents and looked
on earlybay.com where this bus had
just been listed. It was exactly what
I was after so I emailed the seller
on a Friday evening and on Sunday
we travelled up from Cornwall to
Mansfield to have a look. We viewed
the bus, booked ourselves into a
hotel for the night and decided it
was the one for us. That same night
we transferred the money to theI
“I’ve been into VW’s since I was a teenager.
I was 13 in a local shop and saw a yellow
Beetle on the cover of the April 95
Volksworld magazine”.
WORDS DAVE RICHARDS, PHOTOGRAPHS; IAN HAWKENStatic seatbelts
are a rarity these
days
Ian has fitted
the front over-
riders, he’s still
looking for a pair
to fit to the rear!