Engine Punk

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 i...

At a holding control on the 1999 Land's End Trial. Note Siva Llama in the background This car resembles VT No.49 in many ways but has a Ford Pinto engine. Listed as a 2-litre in the entry for the 1999 Land's End Trial, it was built by built by Martin Harry to be driven by his wife Julia and boy did she give it some stick! It proved to be very effective and impressed me when taking my Siva Llama out for the first time. I don't know it's constructional details as we were running late and pushed for time when we eventually caught up with it. I have a feeling a Beetle gearbox was used and someone told me it also used Beetle rear suspension. Not seen on the hills for a while, I believe it stills exists way down Camborne way and will one day take to the hills again.

The sun shone again on the Run to the Sun this year and in addition to peachy 23 windowed microbuses like this example there many other fine examples of automotive art present at the show'n'shine on Sunday. My sister said I was mad to go for many people who have live around Newquay believe RTTS causes nothing but trouble with the local toughs picking fights with louts from a line when I saw nothing but people having a good time, admiring each other's handicraft and relaxing in the weather. This machine won spirit of the event award and I featured it on this blog last year. At that stage, it still looked a bit like a Beetle but now resembles a tannalised log cabin on wheels that -- against all the laws of probability -- has been souped up. In the space of just 12 months, it's had a pretty radical reworking and about the only clue to the retention of the running gear underneath was the voodoo dolls head gear knob. Rust patination was demonstrated by a...

This year I scandalised my friends and family by going to the Run To The Sun . This event has such a bad reputation that my sister always arranges to be away for the late May Bank holiday weekend. The town becomes so crowded with drunks toting water pistols she felt that she was a prisoner in her own home and now lives abroad, near Truro. But Newquay these days is always like that. It’s the stag and hen night capital of the UK. And apparently 2008 was one of the most incident free events for many years. More of us should go. For me it was a spur of the moment thing. The weather was good, I was down west but everyone else was convinced the weather was bad and wanted to stay home. I didn’t see any of the bands or camp over night, I just went to the Show’n’shine in Tregunnel Hill car park. Vee Dubs would be Vintage Things were they not so mainstream. What teenage girl has not hankered after a Beetle because they are cool? Many years ago, it was said that you cannot tune a Beetl...