Inhaltsverzeichnis für August 2020 in VolksWorld

Well, where do I begin? Since the last issue of VolksWorld hit the shelves, the world has changed in ways few of us could have predicted or ever imagined possible. The global pandemic has forced us to re-think the way we interact and communicate for the foreseeable future, and the repercussions are being felt in all walks of life. The impact on the world of magazines was felt on many levels. Not least the closure of the vast majority of retail outlets. Supermarkets remained open, but people were more concerned about hoarding toilet paper than printed paper in those aisles. Fortunately, the World Wide Web provided an alternative outlet for not only digital products, but also traditional printed mags, too. Buying a single issue online, or signing up for a…

In 2017 I was helping organise cars for The VolksWorld Show when I received a call from an old friend by the name of Lyndon Creamer. Having featured his supercharged ’56 Oval in Ultra VW some years previous, and having been a fan of the trophy-winning ’64 he’d build in 2003, I was keen to find out what he’d been up to in the meantime. What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was the answer: “I don’t want to send you any photos, but you have to trust me when I say this one deserves a podium spot. I’m not just building a car to bring to the show, I’m building a car to win the Best of Show trophy.” Brave words, considering the immense quality of VolksWorld-winning cars in recent…

While converted Campers and Sambas are the backbone of the business, Yudhi Yumos has built some truly outstanding one-off creations in the past. Each year Yudhi reveals at least one (but sometimes two or three) scratch-built projects at the Jogja VW Festival in Indonesia. This is the world’s largest indoor VW show, which attracts in excess of 20,000 visitors, so it’s the perfect place to debut new models and show off exactly what team Yumos is capable of. In recent years, Yudhi has taken a shine (pun intended) to early Porsche models, which led him to create an aluminium-bodied Abarth Carrera replica and his own take on the Type 64 Berlin-Rome racer. Racing rarities aside, Yudhi has also built a number of Porsche 356 coupé replicas (also aluminium-bodied, albeit painted)…

“a mind-boggling 11.17-sec ET at 121mph” In May 2020, VolksWorld magazine featured Mike Cupurdija’s fantastic 1963 Ghia, a turbocharged coupé built by Bob Cook on the east coast of the USA. The owner of Cooker’s Restoration in Williamsport, Maryland, Bob has made a name for himself within the American VW scene with a number of cleverly conceived project cars with a distinct performance edge. With fat rear tyres squeezed under stock wings in the traditional Pro Street style, they all have that certain ‘Cooker’s Look.’ Meanwhile, Bob has built a reputation as a competitive drag racer, but with a most unusual vehicle – this 1960 Split Window Panel Van. Sure, he’s not the first to race a Bus but, let’s face it, the Type 2’s brick-like aerodynamics and relatively hefty…

The Rahmi M. Koç (pronounced ‘Coach’) Museum is a private industrial museum in Istanbul, Turkey dedicated to the history of transport, industry and communications. For car lovers, it stands out for the variety and quality of the vehicles on display that, of particular interest to us here on VolksWorld, includes a number of classic Volkswagens. Started decades ago by the Turkish industrialist of the same name, this surprising collection comprises some 16,000 items and is constantly evolving, thanks to the passion of its founder. The honorary president of a group with an annual turnover of over 21 billion euros, Rahmi recalls the genesis of his museum: “When I was a boy, my father, Vehbi, brought me an electric train from Germany as a gift. Thus my passion for mechanical toys…

Darrell vittone-a life in racing It's a sad fact of life that we all come to a point in our lives when we learn of the passing of our heroes. Growing up, we look up to people who inspire us in our endeavours, whether as a role model for a future career or, for those of us into the world of VW performance and drag racing, an inspiration to learn, to do better, to win. Yet with every passing year, it seems another of the heroes of our scene leaves us, and we're never ready to hear the news. And so it was with Darrell Vittone. Those who knew Darrell were aware he was not in the finest of health in recent times, but his indomitable spirit shone through, meaning…

It’s only when you start looking at the amount of rear-engined, air-cooled coachbuilts that puttered out of the ’50s that you realise the scale of debt the automotive world owes to the creation of Dr. Porsche and Frau Volkswagen. Sure, a great many car snobs sneer at anything based on the humble Beetle’s underpinnings, but they tend to drive MGs, stink of pipe smoke and have tweed wives, so have no jurisdiction here. We’re not just talking about the obvious things either, like Karmann Ghias and Porsches, but much rarer birds from European coachbuilders. Cars with exotic names such as Rometsch, Dannenhauer & Stauss and Beutler. “some of the quirkiest worker bees outside of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory” No doubt those are names all well-informed VolksWorld readers will be familiar…

“at the tender age of 16, David is already a big part of the California VW scene” Growing up as part of a family that thought cars were just a mechanism of getting from a to b, I’d have given anything to have members of my family into old VWs. Talking to David Huerta for this feature on the Bug he built with his dad, I got the real feeling that VWs are in the Huerta family blood. Not only did David’s father have a Bug as his first car, but his grandfather, too. Which perhaps explains why, at the tender age of 16, David is already a big part of the California VW scene. I first learned of David, who also goes by the name of Baitmedia, when he…

In March this year the world was left reeling by the Covid-19 pandemic, and consequently we had no option but to postpone The VolksWorld Show (now showing on 3-4 October this year) and prepare ourselves for lockdown. Safety was, of course, a priority so there was no problem on that front, but there was no disguising the overwhelming sense of disappointment when we ’phoned around traders and owners of show cars to confirm the news. The good news is the show has been re-scheduled, and the cars will still get the glory they deserve. And with an unexpected extra few months in hand there should be no ‘ran out of time’ or ‘not quite finished’ excuses, eh? One of the toughest calls we had to make was to Andy Finch…

Family affair Hi, my name is Tatiana Walls and I'm a huge fan of all things VW. My father grew up in a Volkswagen family and I’m proud to say I have inherited the Volkswagen family gene, ha ha! My dad has been a long-time fan of VolksWorld (we have six huge boxes filled with back issues dating back to what seems like the Ice Age), so I thought it was time to send you guys an email to say thank you, and keep up the good work. I’ve also attached a drawing of a Type 2, which was inspired by one of the Buses featured in your magazine. It was actually part of an advertising project I was working on at college, but I’d love to see it in…

49-year old Yudhi is responsible for many wild creations, including a 41-window limo Bus and some amazing one-off Porsche replicas. However, the impressive 1,750m2 Yumos Garage has built quite a reputation in VW circles in recent years for the superb Split Screen Camper and 23-window Samba recreations it has been turning out. Now, we should point out straight away that the Yumosbuilt Splits are not built with the intention of fooling, or misleading, anyone regarding their heritage. In fact, the marketing and sales material makes it clear from the start that each Yumos-converted pseudo Split began life as a Brazilian Bay Window. If anything, the Bay Window background is a key selling point as, not only are they based on much newer vehicles, the Brazilian-built Buses left the factory with…

Most of the major German toy manufacturers were located in the Nürnberg (Nuremberg) area from the 1930s, and the largest German toy fair, the Internationale Spielwarenmesse, is still held in the city every year. The German firm of Tipp & Company – commonly referred to as Tipp&Co, Tippco or TCO – was a manufacturer of tin toys, and its facilities were located in this area. One such toy was a replica of a Split Window-era Volkswagen Beetle and, in the post-WWII era, was sold as part of a track set. Tipp&Co track sets came in various sizes and features over the years. The top-of-the-line ‘deluxe’ version included several metres of track, bridges, special crossovers and a number of vehicles could operate on the track at the same time. It was…

With the country on lockdown at the time of writing, I find myself saying something no one has ever uttered in the hallowed pages of VolksWorld before, I’m sorry I couldn’t get to Halfords. As a consequence, I haven’t been able to buy the rest of the paint I need to finish painting my tinware. Sure, other people sell satin black rattle cans, but I don’t want to risk buying something that doesn’t match, so I’ve turned my attention to one of the many other jobs on my to-do list. I really didn’t want to flit between jobs as I want to tick chunks of work off, rather than bits here and there, but needs must so I did the one job I’ve been itching to do since the ’58…