It’s late 2018, and Mark Pindar is bored, on his third successive evening of watching films in the lounge on his own.
His teenage boys are on their Playstations, and wife Claire is busy with her hobby of making curtains.
“She stuck her head round the door and said ‘you all right?’” he says. “I said ‘not really, this is boring’. So I just said to her ‘I might do another project’. I was only testing the water. And she said ‘yeah, why don’t you?’
“I went straight on eBay and within six hours I’d purchased a 1966 Beetle Cabriolet for £6,800. The bloke said ‘don’t you want to see it?’ I said ‘I don’t care, it’s irrelevant to me how it looks’. The more wrecked it is, it’s not a worry to me.”
Mark’s confidence stems from nearly 40 years in car body repairs – he’s now the bodyshop manager of Wollaston BMW – and a previous restoration of a ‘66 11-window splitscreen camper.
Even so, the Beetle, a left hand drive import from New York, really was pretty wrecked, despite looking respectable thanks to a respray at some point.
“That covers a multitude of sins,” says Mark, “and when I got it back here I was jacking it up and the door gaps closed up to nothing, and then when I put it on axle stands the door gaps opened up and I could put my whole hand in. What’s going on here?
“I started stripping it and realised a lot of the structural points had Coca-Cola cans cut, then flattened out and then riveted in all the structural areas, which had all rotted away.
“God, if this car had a crash everybody in it would be dead, it would probably go in two halves.
“It’s always horrible to uncover stuff, but for me it was perfect.”
Stunning Beetle Cabriolet
Just over a year later, weeks before the first Covid lockdown, the Beetle had been transformed into the stunning, multiple award-winning car you see in these pictures.
“I immediately loved it,” says Mark, 55. “If you can remember back to lockdown, the weather was awesome, barbecue weather. There were shops open, so every other day I would jump in my Beetle and go to the butchers two or three miles away.
“I’m stuck at home, what more is a man going to do other than drink beer and eat barbecue food? We’re in heaven – the world’s not, but behind our front door we are.”
Mark remembers two incidents that shaped his love of messing about with car bodies.
“I was about 15 and my friend had a little old Fiat, which he bumped into a wall,” he says, “so we went up the road and bought a pot of filler and stuff, came back and rubbed it down.
“Then funnily enough, the next week they had a careers evening at school and I saw this advert for a bodyshop panel beater on a YTS, earning £27 a week.
“That’s how I went into it, and I’ve never looked back. I’ve been in it all my life, and it’s been good to me and my family.”
On the road in a Mini
Mark honed his driving skills in the motor trade before buying his first car at the age of 18, a £350 K-reg Mini Estate that he resprayed in red.
“Before I had a licence I got to move the cars around at work, so I became very good at parking and judging gaps, unusually good,” he smiles. “My driving instructor was like ‘hang on a minute, there’s something weird here’. I said ‘I’ve been driving in a garage for years’.”
After the Mini, for many years Mark was a firm fan of fast Fords, owning hot Escorts including a 1600 Sport, droop snoot RS2000, and an RS Turbo.
But when his father Gerry passed away, he wanted a project to dedicate to his memory.
“I looked at Dax Cobras, but my wife said to me ‘hang on a minute, there are four of us here, why do you want a Cobra?’ and I was like ‘oh, OK, that makes sense’,” he says. “Then I came across this splitscreen in a field, where it must have been for about 30 years. I called him Gerry.
“I paid £3,400 for him, dragged him out of the field, and spent two years doing him up. He’s worth a lot of money now, but the money’s irrelevant, I’ll never sell any of my cars.”
Mark, Claire and their two sons, Louis and Sydney, have enjoyed dozens of camping trips in Gerry over the past 14 years, fully embracing the Volkswagen scene.
“We’ve been camping since they were little kids, and they loved it,” says Mark. “Now they’re 15 and 17 they’re starting to think ‘do we really want to go away with mum and dad? Maybe not’. “But that’s fine, me and Claire will go away.
“The VW scene is amazing. I’ve made lifelong friends through my splitscreen, and a lot of knowledgeable friends.
“I’ve never come across any snobbery – I’ve got mates who drive the rat-look vehicles and the shinies, and we all mix because it’s just a VW thing.”
Rotten Beetle
Fast forward to November 2018, and Mark was once again in restoration mode, ready to tackle the rotten Beetle.
“I braced it all together with a welded frame, because I realised this thing flexes all over the place, so in doing that I held its structure while I went around and cut everything off,” he says. “I managed to save all the original wings and repaired them, and the bonnet and boot are also original.”
The shell was sent away for sandblasting, returning peppered with holes and bits missing.
“You then see the reality of what you’ve got, and start to make your shopping list,” he says, “I discovered very quickly with the Beetle, which was different from the bus, that the panels were rubbish, really rubbish.
“I bought a black heater channel for £110, but none of the holes lined up with the expensive floor panels I bought from Westfalia. I knew the floor panels were perfect.
“Then I bought a strengthener that goes underneath from a guy who hand makes them, and he had a new old stock (nos) underside of a heater channel. I rested it on top of this brand new black panel and the holes were an inch out. I thought, ‘I’m not putting that on my car’.
“So I went for what we call the ‘funky green panels’, which cost £960 for two, but when I put them against the nos panel, they were spot on, so I knew when I was building the car it was going to be right.
“I can’t stand building a car with everything not fitting, and the heater channels are important because they hold the front together with the back.”
Bodged front end
It was the same story with the bodged front end, which Mark cut off and welded into place another black panel.
“I wasn’t happy with how it was looking, and realised this whole front panel was just a mess,” he says. “So I hunted down an original front end chopped off a ‘66 Beetle, and luckily one of my friends had one. It slipped on the car beautifully.”
With the bodywork all prepped, it was time to choose a colour, and time to hand over some of the work to colleague and sprayer Anthony James, who was keen to be involved.
“I don’t paint these days,” says Mark. “Why come out of retirement, have a go and mess your car up? Not after putting more than 1,000 hours into the car.
“The colour is the hardest thing to choose, because if you get it wrong you’ve messed it up and it’s also a very personal thing.
“I was at work thinking ‘what colour shall I do it?’ and sat there on the forecourt in the sunshine was a lovely Mini in Chilli Red. I thought ‘God, that’s a really vibrant red, it’s lovely’.
“Red paint is quite transparent, and when you use a white primer underneath, the sun goes through the red and bounces off the white underneath, and that’s what gives everything a really crisp bright red look. Anthony has done an amazing job.”
Late nights in the garage
Getting the car to that stage involved a lot of late nights working in the garage and out on the drive.
“I’ve built both of the vehicles in this road, and I’ve never had anybody even come up to me and say ‘Mark can you keep the noise down’,” says Mark. “When it gets to 9pm at the latest it was down with the noisy tools, and time to pick up the rubbing down cloth. I’ve been up until 2am rubbing down.”
So much for the bodywork, but what about the engine?
When he bought the Beetle, it had the ‘correct’ 1300cc unit, but it was seized solid.
“My friend Brett was selling the engine out of his splitscreen, a 1600 with twin Weber carbs,” says Mark, “so I bought that off him for £2,000. Mechanics isn’t my thing, but I knew it was a running engine, so all I had to do was strip it, paint it, and put it back together. It’s been in there ever since, and it’s a good engine.”
Just as much care was taken to ensure the interior of the Beetle is as stunning as the outside, especially as the rear seat is as rare as hen’s teeth.
“They are almost impossible to find, because they only fit the convertible,” says Mark, “so I had to be really careful with them.”
All the seats were stripped, sandblasted, powder coated and re-trimmed in American tweed by Dave the Trimmer in Cranfield, Bedfordshire.
“When I pulled up there he had nothing but Aston Martins and massively expensive vehicles,” says Mark. “I was like ‘I think I’m well out of my price bracket here’, but he wanted to be a part of the project.
“He’s a lovely guy, and he said ‘no, I really love it’, so we came to an agreement. He did the seats, hood and interior, and he made a wonderful job of it.”
The carpet material was from Newton Commercial, and the hood from KHM in Germany.
Beetle air ride
When it came to the ride, Mark wanted another challenge, and opted for a Ridetech air ride system from Dog Back Beam Performance.
“In the VW scene there’s quite a following for slammed vehicles, and it’s a stance I like,” he says. “I like parking it up and dropping it down.
“It’s an automatic system, and when you start the car it instantly rises itself to level two. When you see you’re going to get horrible terrain or speed bumps you can hit level three, and when you get out you get hit level one on buttons either inside the vehicle or on a remote control.
“I did the Beetle up for Claire, and she does drive it but I think she’d probably prefer it was standard height, because we’re in Northampton and it’s covered in potholes.
“It bottoms out occasionally on the skid plate underneath the front that hands down lower to protect the car, and it’s not a nice noise when it whacks against the ground.”
The exhaust is from Vintage Volkshaus, while the original gearbox was modified to accommodate a taller fourth gear, which was not without its issues.
“I put it in, but I couldn’t test it until the first day I drove it,” says Mark, “and it popped out of fourth gear – ‘you’re joking!’
“It was so heartbreaking because I knew it was a massive job to get the gearbox out, so I left it like that for 3,500 miles, with a bungee around the gearstick to hold it in place.
“This last winter I bit the bullet, took it all apart, and sent it to a guy called John Walklett, who knew exactly what was wrong and changed it all. I put it back in, and it’s beautiful.
“It means I can sit really happily at 70mph, and not get overtaken by all the big trucks, but I don’t bomb it around.”
Finishing touches
Finishing touches include replica Fuchs Porsche wheels made by Flat 4 in Japan at a cost of about £1,500 plus import duties, “the best replica you can buy”, with 205 tyres on the back and skinny 125s on the front, and Porsche 911 headlight lenses.
A chrome badge bearing the car’s name, Burt (the Vert), adorns the rear.
Since those early lockdown runs to the butcher, Burt has travelled far and wide, gathering trophies almost everywhere he goes.
The first was ‘Europe’s most beautiful Volkswagen’ at VW Action.
“It was a real honour to win that because I didn’t know about that trophy,” says Mark. “My good friend Nick had won best in show, and I was like ‘oh wow, well done’.
“I hadn’t won anything, but that’s OK, I don’t go to win, it’s just there in the show. Then they called out my name and handed me this skittle. I didn’t realise there was an even better prize to get. It was a lovely prize to win, and apparently it gives you passage into Europe. They invite you into their shows.”
Burt has amassed nine trophies in all, including one at Edition 38, and in March 2023 scooped best in cruise at Ninove in Belgium.
Mark was part of a roughly 100-strong UK contingent that headed to Folkestone, through the tunnel, and headed to the historic Slaghmuylder Brewery in the town west of Brussels.
“It was a lovely, pleasurable drive because of the tall fourth gear,” says Mark. “It was a bit chilly, but we went for it and dropped the hood down on the cruise.
“It’s a great fun cruise, and half the buzz is making the journey. I’ve done it three times, twice in the splitscreen, and once in the Beetle. I always go with a great bunch of guys.
“On the Sunday morning, the only cars allowed in the town are air-cooled. If you take pictures in black and white, you can walk around and be in the ‘50s or ‘60s.”
One of the perks of showing Gerry and Burt is getting the best parking…
Mark’s love for the shows
“You’re not parking in the public car park, you’re safely in the middle and you can relax and enjoy the show,” says Mark. “Everyone gets to see your car, and that’s enjoyment for them – that’s why they’ve gone there, and you get a lot of nice comments. It’s a fun thing to do.”
As well as the shows and cruises, both Volkswagens earn their keep as wedding cars.
“They generate their own income,” he says. “The money goes into a pot, and when they want something, they get it without me having to pay for it.
“It means my family doesn’t get damaged by the obscene amount of money that some things can cost in the Volkswagen scene.”
Mark knows that with Louis and Sydney at or approaching driving age, they will soon be asking “dad, can I take the…?”
“I will say ‘yeah, they can take them’, because they will be theirs one day,” he smiles. “I don’t really think about selling them, though if someone offers a ridiculous amount of money, maybe I’d be an idiot not to.
“But they’re mine, they’ll always be mine, and Gerry’s very sentimental because of the connection with my father.”
Other suppliers: Cool Air Volkswagen Specialists, Machine 7, NAPS, Just Kampers, Limebug, Marque Restore Chrome Plating, Alan Schofield, Custom and Commercial, and Heritage Parts Centre.
