Table of contents for Issue 166 - February 2026 in VWt

NEW YEAR, NEW ADVENTURES... Full disclosure, I inherited a six-birth Fiat motorhome a few years back. It was big, solid, and utterly uncompromising – much like the routine that grew around it. Every February half-term, we’d load up the family and head south to Spain so the kids could train on their bikes in the mountains. My wife loves that camper. Which is worth saying, because my wife does not do change. So this year, suggesting we leave the big camper behind felt like a dangerous strategy. But somehow, against all odds, I’ve persuaded her that we’ll take the Transporter instead and hire a gite. This trip needs to be right. Preparations have been… considered. A brand-new orange flashing beacon to accompany the warning triangle, our home-built tea-and-coffee unit carefully…

CAMPERVANTASTIC AT VOLKSWORLD SHOW We’re thrilled to announce that CamperVantastic is confirmed as the official VWt Paddock Partner for the 2026 VolksWorld Show. CamperVantastic officially came of age in 2025, that’s to say it celebrated its 18th year of supporting the VW community and promoting the Veedub lifestyle to current owners and a whole new generation of enthusiasts through their endevours hiring and selling their California campervans and associated camping accessories. Set to take place on Sunday 22nd March 2026 at the South of England Showground in West Sussex, tickets are already on sale for the show. Prices start at just £10 for a display pass for any air-cooled VW, which includes driver and passenger. And if you’d prefer to stay over, a camping pitch is just £30, and that’s…

“Aaron obviously still liked the idea of a T4 but realised he’d need to buy a Coachbuilt” You can picture it, can’t you? You’ve driven to European Bug-in in Belgium with your girlfriend, it tipped it down all the way there, it rained throughout the show and the rain persisted all the way home. Sounds miserable, doesn’t it, especially as the journey was in a VW Buggy without a roof and you’d been living out of a soggy tent all week! It’s no wonder then on his return 45-year-old Aaron Phillips from Rayleigh, Essex opted to buy his first VW van for future camping excursions. “My then girlfriend, now wife, Amy told me in no uncertain terms that if I wanted to keep doing these shows, she wouldn’t be doing…

“It’s not just a showpiece, it’s our escape. We take the van out as often as we can” ‘Clean’ is not a dirty word. Well, obviously. The explosion of detailing companies over the last decade or so speaks volumes about enthusiasts’ growing keenness to keep their rides spick-and-span (we know a whole bunch of people who spend way more time cleaning their cars than they ever do cleaning their houses), and the fact that companies like Meguiar’s and Auto Finesse have the budget to build such astonishing demo vehicles proves that there’s a lot of cash sloshing about in this market. The fact that Kevin Caldecott’s T6 is so ridiculously pristine and beautifully presented should tell us a lot about its ethos and purpose. Pick any surface or element you…

T7 H&R/SOLOW COILOVER KIT Get a killer stance on your T7 with this adjustable coilover kit, developed exclusively for the model. Yep, that’s right, they’re the first T7 coilovers to hit the market! The kit has been engineered to deliver the perfect balance of comfort, handling and aesthetics in the way only SoLow and H&R know how, and you’ll get full adjustability with a drop of 30-60mm at the front and 40-65mm at the rear. The precise height tuning will allow you to choose between a more subtle drop and something a lot more aggressive while maintaining comfort and predictable road manners. Price: £1345.50 Transporterhq.co.uk SEALEY TOOL PROMOTION Kick off the new year on the front foot with a decent set of tools. And where better place to shop than…

“I only sold the last T5 as I wanted another 4Motion that benefited from a diff lock” We always try to come up with a cool location when shooting Transporters for VWt and the idea of Parkwood Outdoors off road centre near Bradford came up as a suggestion for Rob’s awesome T5 4Motion. For those that aren’t familiar with the facilities Parkwood has to offer, this is a vast playground for off roaders containing countless extreme obstacles including steep gradients, deep rutted tracks and a few lakes thrown in for good measure. Initially, we expected the shoot to take place on the less extreme fire roads while the severe trails appeared in the background. Yet, before we knew it, Rob was taking us around the entire site in his van…

‘It turned out that it was all a dream.’ A lazy plot device that’s been irritating people for generations. Dallas famously undid a whole season’s plot by retroactively saying it had all been a dream (bit of a slap in the face for the viewers, there), while the movie Vanilla Sky has a massive ‘Oh, wait, he was in a coma the whole time’ twist. It’s the kind of halfassed deus ex machina that schoolchildren come up with. …but let’s not write off the power of dreams entirely! If it wasn’t for the Happy Days episode in which Richie Cunningham had a dream about Mork, we wouldn’t have had the whole Mork & Mindy spin-off series. American Psycho is basically one long mental struggle to figure out whether Patrick Bateman’s just…

SIMON LEONARD Hi VWt, my van’s a 1992 T4 which I bought as a 100 percent stock 1.9 ex-builder’s van about 12 years ago for £800. I’ve had a few VWs previously, including a couple of Mk1 and Mk2 Golfs but this was my first van. Basically for ease having become a dad, I kept it stock for a few years but always had the desire to build a proper van with no holding back. I planned to do all the work myself (apart from the engine and major mechanic things), so with help from an old school friend I made a list of what needed doing; replacing panels, putting windows in and roller painting it under a gazabo in true budget build style. Seeing loads of vans at shows…

Windows are a great invention – they let a flood of light into a Transporter and allow you to see out at the same time – clever, eh? Most Transporters start their life as a bog-standard Panel Van which means no windows in the back, so if you want a civilised living space you’ll need to add some. It’s a very popular and common modification and really transforms your outlook on the world. Of course you could fit the window yourself – to be honest it’s not especially technical. But why risk damaging a £30,000 van for the sake of a few hundred pounds; surely much better to get an expert, who could do it with a blindfold on. Here we’ve fitted a selection of windows; a standard window, one…