This story has it’s seeds back in 1986 when I was a hard-up young apprentice mechanic. A few of my friends had bought old Series 1 and 2 Landrovers to explore the Nelson backcountry with. I considered these vehicles too expensive and unreliable for my modest budget so instead I settled on a 1960 VW Beetle with a 1200cc engine. This car was owned by a Queenstown girl who had rolled the vehicle, I bought it from a backyard panelbeater who got a bit carried away - there was now a 25mm gap between the doors and the roof. This vehicle proved to be quite useful off-road and certainly didn’t disgrace itself in the company of ‘proper’ four wheel drives.
Fast forward to 1999. I decided to build a new vehicle, VW based for off-road, commonly referred to as a ‘Baja’. Using the knowledge from my previous Baja, and 10 years of competitive off-road racing, I built the car that most club members are now familiar with.
It is based on a 1969 VW Beetle with a 1722cc engine with plenty of torque at low to medium RPM and a Brazilian Kombi gearbox with ratios to suit larger tyres, VW Variant front discs, raised suspension front and rear, roll hoop and hand-built rear shocks for a more comfortable ride. One of the more useful mods is individual handbrakes for each rear wheel - used as a poor man’s LSD to control a spinning rear wheel which are 235/75 x 15’s and 215 x 15 front.
25 years of driving VW’s on and off-road has taught me many skills, the most important being how to read terrain and obstacles. Certainly it requires a different technique and choice of line than a 4WD might use.
When contemplating the fit-out of their vehicles for club trip use, some members regard diff-locks, winches, snorkels and 35’ tyres as essential items.
When I back my 2WD down the drive at home to participate on the same trip, I like to think of the new Speight’s advert on TV...
‘Only take what you need’...