A Karmann Ghia parked outside a bar in Blackheath changed Elliot Booth-Adams’ life forever.
It was 2004, and he’d just got engaged to his now-wife Heidi when they spotted the Cal-look Ghia and “fell in love”.
- Elliot’s Karmann Ghia
“I said ‘wow, that’s an amazing car, I’d love to get one of those’,” he says, chatting inside the couple’s classic Eriba Pan caravan, “and she said ‘I’ll buy you one’.”
The Karmann Ghia transformed their lives
Heidi’s engagement present (“I got her a nice ring,” he laughs) was to transform the couple’s lives as they threw themselves into the VW scene they still enjoy today.
- Elliot with his cars at Whitenoise
First, Elliot needed to find a car and, after overlooking a Ghia on sale for £1,000 that had been sitting in a field for years and had no floor, he found a running coupe with an MOT in Brighton.
“It was driveable but it had quite a lot of rust on the lower sills and lower areas, so I knew it needed some work,” he says. “It looked a bit tatty.”
Nevertheless, after parting with just under £3,000, he was able to drive the Ghia, which had matching numbers, the 90 miles home to Whitstable on the north Kent coast.
- The Karmann as it was
“It was great,” he says. “I was so excited I gave myself a massive headache. It could have been the fumes, or the water sloshing around in it, I don’t know, but it was brilliant, absolutely brilliant.”
The car, manufactured in December 1966 and first registered the following month, came with a wealth of history, which showed it was first bought outright by a woman in Washington County, Rhode Island, and imported to the UK in 1993.
Karmann Ghia was their daily driver for 10 years
It was used as a daily driver for about 10 years in Brighton until Heidi’s grand gesture saw it move from one coastal resort to another.
Despite previous experience tinkering with and restoring an early Fiesta and an Astra van in his younger days, they were nothing that could have prepared Elliot for the race against time to get the Karmann ready for their wedding.
“I had 18 months to get it ready, and I did it right to the day,” he says. “I was still doing bits to it on the wedding day.
- Stripped down and flatted
“It was great, I was in the garage working on the car and Heidi was organising the wedding and all the other bits and pieces. My brother-in-law drove it on the day – he was petrified, shaking!”
The rebuild was 18 months of hard work and pain, sometimes literally, and was nearly abandoned before it really got going.
“There was one part where I stripped it all to pieces, and the bottom half was rotten,” he remembers. “I wheeled it out and thought ‘do I scrap this, or do I keep going?’ You get those points where you start to restore a car yourself. I’m glad that I carried on with it.”
After stripping the paint down to bare metal, Elliot took the car to a shot blaster to “speed the process up a bit”.
Shot blasting the car
“I’ve heard that shot blasting is not good, but I had it done,” he says, “and they caved one of the doors in when they started to blast it.
“Me and my friend then had to jump up and down on one of these doors to try and pop it back out again, then fill and sand it.”
- The interior before the restoration
The next job was to cut away the bottom six inches of the Ghia and replace it with fresh steel, which involved the painful process of learning to weld.
- The restored interior
“I hadn’t welded at all, so it was completely new to me,” says Elliot, who bought a MIG welder and made regular trips to Halfords for fresh gas canisters. “I did all my own welding, and have the scars to prove it, welding upside down and getting splatters on my hands and arms.
“I also cut the rot out and plated the heater channels, which are the main structure of the car.”
Inside, the seats were reupholstered, the roof re-headlined, carpets replaced, doors re-trimmed and dashboard repainted – all done to a professional standard.
Rebuilding the VW Karmann Ghia’s engine
Meanwhile, the 1493cc engine, which pushes out a modest 43bhp, revealed more problems.
- Engine before the rebuild
“I had to get it centreline bored, because the crank was just about salvageable,” says Elliot. “I’ve had the engine apart three times since to redo bits and pieces.”
- The engine now
How did it feel to drive after putting so much time and effort into getting the black VW to the stunning condition you see in our photographs?
“It was a great feeling, though I was worried about stone chips,” he laughs. “I’m a bit precious over it.
“It’s great fun to drive, it puts a smile on your face, as well as people outside smiling when they see it. It’s lovely to get a wave from people.”
It wasn’t long before Elliot and Heidi were enjoying the VW scene, with Volksfest Wales the first show they attended.
“We drove there through the rain, and only had a tiny little tent,” he says. “We had no mallet, so we had to put the tents pegs in by hitting them with bottles of beer, some of which broke.
“At the time the rat-look was in and there were quite a few Ghias around that were all old looking and slammed on the floor.
‘Too shiny mate’
“I’d go past them and they’d go ‘ooh, too shiny mate’. I’d say ‘I’m sorry, but I like it like this’. Now it’s come round a bit, and originality seems to be the key.”
That first show also heralded the start of a trophy-laden show career for Elliot and the Ghia.
“I was absolutely dumbfounded that I won a prize, ‘what, really?’” he says. “There were some beautiful cars there, including Porsche 356s, and then from then we started to go to a few more shows and got the bug for it.”
The trophy haul is now quite extensive, and includes a “top 20” award at the VolksWorld show plus a host of best in show wins.
“Some friends who come around with me laugh at me if I don’t win and stuff like that,” he says with a smile. “One time I was at VW Action and the announcer said ‘best of show goes to a beautiful black Karmann…’ and for some reason in my head I just started walking, but then they said ‘Beetle’ and it was ‘hahaha’. I felt that small, but it was good fun, I don’t mind, I’ve got broad shoulders.
“They say I’m a bit of a media whore, and the car’s been on the cover of a few magazines. I love the car, other people like the car, and they love taking pictures of it.
“One thing that astounded me, I was at Brighton Breeze and a guy came up and said ‘this is the car I’ve got as a screensaver in my office at home’. I was shocked by that.”
Karmann remarkably reliable for 15 years
On the road, the Karmann has been remarkably reliable, with only three breakdowns in 15 years, and just a single trip on a low-loader, when distributor issues struck on the way to Stonor about five years ago.
“We had all the food and wine, and it was only 7am, but we thought we might as well get some seats at the crash barrier and have a glass of wine,” he laughs. “Because my son was so small he was crying: ‘We’re going to have to throw the car away dad, it’s broken.’ ‘No, I can fix it.’
“We went home, got the Golf, transferred everything and drove that there.”
There was a hairy moment towing the 1978 Eriba caravan, also fully restored by Elliot, to Whitenoise in Norfolk this summer.
“I had complete brake failure, which was interesting,” he says. “We came to a roundabout on the A12, I put my foot down and it went straight to the floor.
“I could smell brakes or clutch burning a little bit, something seizing. But my mate’s van’s always having trouble, so I blamed it on that.
“But when we stopped his wife said to me ‘there was smoke coming from your wheels when you were driving’.
“I had to pull the handbrake up, we pulled over and the brake was seized so much that the fluid had boiled off and come out the top of the reservoir.
“I wiped all that up, let it cool down, and luckily I had a spanner to bleed the brakes, and they came back. It was a bit scary driving with no brakes and a caravan on the back in a 50-year-old car, but we made it.
“Breaking down is part of it”
“When you’ve got a love of these cars, you’ve got to know a little bit about them. Breaking down is part of it, and it makes a story afterwards.”
Norfolk is one of the longer trips the couple have made, but not the longest – that honour goes to a tour all the way down to the South of France that started well, but deteriorated significantly.
“On the way down it was lovely, 50-odd Karmann Ghias with the owners club driving through the French countryside,” he remembers. “But then about 15 of us went down with salmonella.
“We had a farmer’s platter, and it was all sorts of bits and pieces – and that was all good, but the bug came from the German sausage that was mass produced.
“It was not pleasant – I was ill for about five or six days, and couldn’t move. That’s the longest time I’ve left the car in a car park. We were thinking about getting a train back because it was so bad, but we did manage to drive it back.”
Over the years, Elliot has continually tinkered with the car, “to get it a bit smoother, get rid of little rattles”, but about five years ago he found a new project when the couple decided they needed a support vehicle.
Finding a triple white 1990 Golf GTi cabriolet
“We were after something for carrying all the heavy stuff and to buzz around in just to have a laugh,” he says, also with half an eye to an investment.
Returning from the pub one Sunday afternoon, they found a triple white 1990 Golf GTi cabriolet for sale on eBay.
“Heidi said ‘bid on it’ so I did, and no-one else bid,” he says, getting the 1800cc, eight-valve Golf for just £670. “It needed some attention, so I put the Ghia to one side and thought ‘let’s play with this’.
“I played with it for a few years and got it running right. It had a few rattles and squeaks, and the steering column snapped, so I sorted all that and she drives lovely now.”
He also got the welder out again to repair the rear quarters where the roof folds down to meet the bodywork, a common rust spot.
“I got a few more burns, welded it up, sanded it, and sprayed it with rattle cans,” says Elliot. “It’s not brilliant, and I’m going to get it done professionally one day, but for now it’s OK.
“We use it at weekends when the sun’s out, put the roof down and drive round the coast in it. It’s a great little car, brilliant fun.”
It also fulfils its support car role on trips to shows, with Elliot driving the Ghia and towing the caravan, with Heidi behind the wheel of the Golf, which is “laden down with beer and food to enjoy ourselves with”.
And that’s now the main thing for Elliot – with both cars and the caravan restored, it’s all about enjoying the scene with his family.
“Enjoying ourselves”
“These days it’s mostly about friends, drinking and enjoying ourselves,” he says. “I love the community spirit and everyone’s like-minded. As we get older we all still want to have a bit of fun and look forward to the weekends, and this is a great thing to come here with friends and enjoy yourself. The kids love it as well – bringing them here, getting them to play cricket and be outside is good – although my son is just starting to show an interest in the cars too.”
Before we leave the caravan, I ask Elliot about a cartoon that’s been in my line of vision for half an hour on the inside of the Eriba’s door.
It was drawn by renowned British artist Peter Jones, a Ghia and splitscreen camper owner who walks around VW events offering his services.
“It was at Battlesbridge in Essex in 2018, and he said ‘I’ll do a cartoon picture on your door, see what you think’,” says Elliot. “He was there for about 20 minutes, turned round and said ‘that’ll be £10 please’, and I said ‘sorry? I’ve got to pay for that? You’ve just graffitied my caravan?’
“He said, ‘honestly, these are going for a lot of money now, 500 or 600 quid.
“I thought ‘right, I’ll take the door off and go and sell this then’. But then my mate said ‘how much is a door for one of these?’ You can’t get them…
“It is really good, and I guess he’s like the Banksy of VWs.”
The Karmann Ghia, especially, clearly means a lot to Elliot, who jokes about one day being buried in it.
“It means marriage, stability, and having fun,” he says. “It means a lot, it really does.”
