Growing up, Kelsey Cram’s mum always made her and her twin brothers save money for a deposit on a house.
But Kelsey had other ideas, aided and abetted by her stepdad Thomas, when the pair of them went halves on a Volkswagen Caddy pick-up a good few years before she could even drive.
She wasn’t really looking for a car (what 13-year-old is?) when they went to look at the 1985 Caddy about five years ago.
“But I was just like ‘I’ve never, ever seen one of them before’,” says Kelsey, already a veteran of VW shows across the east of England.
‘I really want that’ 1985 VW Caddy
“I thought ‘I really want that’, so I used my savings and me and my stepdad bought it half and half. He gave me his half for my 18th birthday.”
The Caddy – based on a Mk1 Golf – cost £2,500 and was dark navy blue with a “horrible shark’s mouth up the side and a crane in the back”.
“It was a workshop vehicle, but I think the crane was just for aesthetics,” says Kelsey. “I don’t think it was ever used.”
Both shark and crane are long gone, and the Caddy looks very different today, thanks to nearly three years of work to get it ready for when Kelsey turned 17.
“We did it when we had a spare weekend, as more of a hobby really,” she says, speaking at the Alive & V-Dubbin festival in Suffolk. “You make it your own, like everyone else here. Everyone’s cars are different in some way, shape or form.”
The Covid-19 backlog for driving tests frustrated Kelsey’s attempts to get on the road when she turned 17 back in August 2020.
Delayed driving test
“I was desperate to pass my driving test, but unfortunately I got stuck in the middle of Covid with my driving test,” she says. “The plan was to do it straight away in a week, but there was a backlog, so I had to wait until December.”
Even then, subsequent lockdowns and government restrictions mean that this summer is the first time the Caddy has been fully involved in the show programme.
“We actually finished it about two years ago, but because of Covid we couldn’t bring it out,” she says. “This year is the first year it’s been coming out, although we did take it to two or three shows with the original ratty look it had, pre-Covid.”
Kelsey started attending VW shows with her family as a small child, attending the very first Alive & V-Dubbin show in 2009.
“My stepdad is a VW mechanic and, ever since I’ve known him, we’ve been coming to shows like this,” she says. “I’ve grown up with it all and fell in love with it. We’d come in a bright green T4 hi-top known as the Hot Wheels van, and we also had the Stormtrooper van, which was a white T4.
“We did between 10 and 12 shows a year, usually quite local, but we also went to Santa Pod.”
All of which led Kelsey – unlike her brothers – to follow in the family VW tradition.
“I’m carrying the torch,” she laughs. “They still appreciate them, but would not come to shows.”
1.6 diesel VW Caddy fitted with air suspension
When she bought it, the 1.6 diesel Caddy was fitted with the air suspension she demonstrates across the rough ground here, as well as the stack exhaust.
“The air ride had only just been fitted when we bought it,” she says, “and the stack can cause problems because of the U-bend on it – when you drive it really low you sometimes bottom out.
“With the air ride, it took us a long time to work out what was comfortable and what wasn’t, to the point where I’ve now got Sharpie marks on the gauges.
“When I’m on a flat road, I just make sure that the dials are on the lines where it drives really smoothly – it took us about a year to do that.”
Among the other changes to the VW, the rat-damaged original interior was replaced by a Golf Mk1 dashboard and Golf GTi seats, while the original wheels were replaced by gold-painted BBS alloys.
The paintwork was without doubt the most expensive part of the renovation.
“It’s Porsche Mint Green, but you can only buy it from Porsche,” says Kelsey, the colour first introduced for the 964 generation 911 in 1991. “It’s a protected colour, and that’s why it cost me an absolute fortune.
Adding pricey Porsche Mint Green paintwork to the custom Caddy
“It’s about £500 a litre – expensive stuff. We used about 5.5 litres, so it was more than £2,500. We did paint it ourselves, so at least we didn’t have that cost, but it was still expensive.
“The only thing left to do is to paint the tailgate – we’ve got a Bully net on it now. It will have a proper tailgate, but it’s got a stamp in it so it’s quite hard to paint and we’ve been putting it off!
“In total, it has probably cost about £6,500, but it’s been done over so much time it doesn’t feel like that much.
“It’s not finished in my eyes. It’s always going to be a project to just keep making it nicer. The plan is to keep doing shows with it for the foreseeable future. People invite us to do stuff with them, and I’m always up for it – we had a photoshoot done last week for Beetle-Juiced, which was awesome. You get to do so much with it without realising you could ever do that.”
So what sort of reaction does Kelsey get when she takes the Caddy out and about?
“Everyone loves it,” she says. “You get people who drive past you at traffic lights and shout ‘I love you car’.
“People in VW vans or Golfs wave at you, and I love that people love it. It’s one of those things I’ve always wanted to have – a show vehicle that stands out.
Custom VW Caddy is mainly a show car
“I admit I don’t go very far in it, because I don’t want to do any damage to it. It’s mainly for shows.”
As well as her stepdad, who runs MPG Autoservices, Kelsey is helped out by her boyfriend Michael, who she met through VW shows.
Michael’s father died of cancer about 10 years ago, and Kelsey uses the car to help promote his and his brother’s charity – Burt’s Boyz – which raises money for cancer charity Marie Curie.
With her parents “too old” (their words) for camping at shows, she now comes to shows with Michael, who has a MK4 Golf powered by a tuned VR6 engine.
So now she’s been well and truly bitten by the VW bug, what’s next for Kelsey?
“The idea is, once I’ve nearly finished and there’s not a lot more I can do with it, maybe move on to the next project,” she says. “So I’d have two vehicles, and I’d have to work out how to bring them both to shows. I’m not sure what it will be yet – it’ll be whatever I fall upon. I might fall upon a proper gem.
“But the next one is going to be more of a speed car than a plod along like that one.”
See Kelsey’s MPG_Customs Instagram page for more pictures of the Caddy.
