Engine Punk

Among VW buggies this machine manages to look quite distinctive without being consciously styled. In the 2008 Exeter it was crewed by Ben Johnson and Barry White ("Ah feel like makin' lurve") from Shaftesbury. Could this be the ultimate VW based trials special? I've heard it cost upwards of £30,000 but in the entry lists I've seen so far it's described simply as a VW Special. I'd like to know who built the thing. It's certainly very effective. I stumbled across these images while looking at pictures associated with my earlier posts on the Exeter Trial.  Y'see, I'm entered again, which makes 3 times so far but for the other two I was unfortunately a non-starter. You've probably read all about those adventure on Engine Punk already. Anyway, I'm quietly confident that with Rob Robinson-Collins we'll do better than before. With a record like mine, the only way is up. And we're going to be in Candidi Provocatore Allard, too. ...

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...

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...