Vintage Thing No.54.1 - The Car With No Name

So there you have it - The Car With No Name built by Anon

I find this highly amusing. Through the power of the internet a chap has got in touch about a mysterious VW based special that I saw years ago at the National Kit Car Show at Stoneleigh. I featured this as VT No. 54, described it simply as a VW Special and asked if anyone could identify it and tell me what it was called.

Bob Bateman got in touch to say it was his car and it was called the CWNN.

What does CWNN stand for?

It stands for Car With No Name.

The origin of this car still remains a mystery. Its builder must have called it something and if it still exists it ought to have something other than Volkswagen on its logbook or V5 because it definitely isn't a Beetle anymore. And the authorities are a bit fussy about that nowadays, unlike the glory times when this car was built. As if anyone could mistake it for a Beetle....

I nearly bought this issue

Bob has filled in some of the gaps. He wrote about it in the July 1992 edition of Jalopy magazine, which was the four-wheeled equivalent of the good old Used Bike Guide. He sent me some scans of this august periodical (they published it in other months as well it was so good) and the flaky pictures are based on those that accompanied his article. Personally I think the poor quality just adds to the enigma that surrounds this remarkable machine.

It was built by someone in Boston in Lincolnshire on a 1966 VW chassis and Bob bought it from somebody else in that area after an intriguing smudge of it appeared in the Auto Trader. He described it as roller painted in Ferrari red with blue showing through in places. Inside most of the fittings were Beetle and all the windows were Beetle sourced, except for the rear window, which was flat. Originally, the CWNN had gullwing doors but these had been converted into more conventional doors that fitted where they touched and fouled the sill when they opened, although the side windows slid down automatically whenever the door was slammed shut. Such sophistication.

Out of the mists of faded newsprint emerges the CWNN. Anyone recognise this stylish automobile?

Once Bob'd got it, his wife took an instant dislike to it - as wives are wont to do. Bob reckons all his friends travelled in it once, if they rode in it at all.

He said he became a laughing stock.

"In a Beetle, the heater ducts run down the side of the sills, and the same was true of our acquisition, except that the sills on it were open on the inside and the ducts had been bodged up from the leftovers of someone's kitchen plumbing. Heath-Robinson though it looked, I must admit that it did work, although in summer it would have useful to have been able to switch it off. After one night of heavy rain, I went out to start the car for the trip to work when, to my amazement, a water fountain sprayed my feet from the heater outlet as the engine pressurised the ducting! I never did found out how the water got in there and it never happened again but you try telling your boss you've just been soaked by an air-cooled car!"

The love-hate relationship that Bob had with the Car With No Name deteriorated until he felt he had to sell it. It took some time to find someone who felt they had to buy it. I think this must have been when I saw it at Stoneleigh. Anyway, he eventually found someone in Birmingham who took it on.

And this is what the CWNN looked like from the rear. Or should it be "looks" like? (as if it still survives)

I bought the first and second issues of Jalopy (and they turned up again the other day) but I dipped out on the third edition. If I'd've bought it, I would have known what little there is to know about this obscure special instead of pondering about it all these intervening years. Actually, that's not true I never gave any thought to it apart from when I snapped it at Stoneleigh and then when I found the print of it in my search for GP Centron pictures.

However, I prefer to have found out the truth about the CWNN by the power of Engine Punk.

The thing is - and I've said it before - does the CWNN still exist? And does its current owner know that - cue Clint Eastwood driving it into sunset - it's the Car With No Name?