Johnny Montana's passion for classic VW cars

Johnny Montana is a well-travelled man, having worked in Australia and Holland and toured the world working on luxury yachts, rubbing shoulders with the super-rich.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that when he’s looking for his next car, his search is global, and not restricted to his native south coast.

While some of his many classic Volkswagens have been shipped over from the US, his happiest hunting ground is Sweden, which was the biggest European market for VW outside Germany.

The Scandinavian country therefore has more than its fair share of Beetles and campers tucked away in barns, many in surprisingly good, original condition.

Thrill of the chase half the fun of classic VW ownership

For Johnny, the thrill of the chase, tracking down, buying and then importing these cars – often driving them home – is half the fun of VW ownership.

“I just love the thrill of collecting a classic VW and road tripping it back to the UK,” he says, combining our chat with looking after his energetic two-year-old daughter, Beau.

“Predominantly, for me, it’s all about the chase, the hunting, finding these vehicles, and getting them back to the UK.

“In Sweden, there is a lot of land and generally they all have outbuildings and the vehicles are stored and therefore in better condition.

“North of Stockholm, in the winter they don’t put salt on the roads. It’s so cold it’s ineffective, so they don’t suffer from rust, and the cars are very good generally.”

The latest purchase sits on the drive outside, a pearl white 1962 VW Beetle, originally a Swedish car that found its way to Holland before Johnny brought it home a few days before our visit.

Survivor-style restoration for 1962 VW Beetle

In the garage, a 1962 VW Beetle sourced from an Arkansas junkyard in the US is nearing the end of an eight-year survivor-style restoration, its unique patina preserved while its interior, underside and engine are fully refurbished.

There’s also a sympathetically restored 1961 black Beetle from Sweden, and a mouse grey, 1963 split screen camper with a Westfalia camping interior, imported from the US in 2008.

The 51-year-old, born in Portsmouth and now living in nearby Gosport, says Volkswagens have wormed their way under his skin since he first bought a VW Golf as a 19-year-old student.

“I can never see myself without one,” he adds. “I love tinkering with them and driving them, improving them.”

When he decided to change his surname, for family reasons, it was to Montana, the original home of the camper that he calls “a keeper”.

“My wife Lucy loves it as much as I do,” he says. “She says she’ll divorce me if I sell it!”

Johnny’s love of VWs began in the late 1980s with that Mars Red Golf GLi Cabriolet, complete with body kit and lowered on Fondmetal snowflake alloys.

A string of early Golfs followed, but by the early 1990s he was making regular trips to the west coast of America to source and import ‘50s classics like Cadillacs, Lincolns and Chryslers.

Falling in love with frugal VWs’ air-cooled charms

When the first Gulf War caused oil and petrol prices to soar, he turned his attention away from the gas-guzzlers and back to the more frugal VWs, becoming increasingly captivated by the charms of air-cooled motors.

A design graduate from the School of Art and Design at Portsmouth University, Johnny stayed on first as a technician in the university’s 3D workshops and then as a lecturer in design.

Fearful of becoming “institutionalised”, he took off to Cornwall to go surfing and landed a job as a crew member on super yachts rented out to the tune of $1million a month.

“I started off as a deckhand, and my last job was a bosun, driving the boats taking guests out scuba diving,” he says, spending a month in the Caribbean with Mika Häkkinen as part of the Finnish driver’s prize for winning the 1998 F1 title.

“The last family I worked for was the royal family of Qatar. It sounded ideal but those people were very, very demanding.”

On dry land, Johnny owned a heavily-modified mark II Golf GTi as his daily driver – clocking up more than 100,000 miles.

“I was travelling to Cornwall to work and surf and a Golf just wasn’t big enough for my tools and surf gear,” he says.

“I started looking for a VW Transporter and found a 1976 Bay Window panel van converted into a camper with an 1800cc type 4 motor.”

Passion for classic VWs

The camper sparked a passion for classic VWs and, when he moved to Holland for work, the bus went with him.

“I was an hour and a half drive from Amsterdam, so weekends were spent there, camping in my bus,” he says. “I found a free parking space behind the main central train station, which was a result.”

After moving back to the UK, Johnny eventually sold the bus for £1,900 (“how times have changed”), hankering after a split screen.

“I really liked the look of them – they were more pleasing on the eye than a bay window,” he says. “I began leaving notes on vans and campers whenever I could, and came close to buying one I’d admired for a long time.

“I had left notes on this bus numerous times, and I finally found out where he lived and went to see him to say I was interested, only to find he had got rid of it. It had failed its MoT and the garage bought it off him.”

He was more successful with another note left on a 14-window bay / split screen hybrid originally from Brazil.

“It was an oddity, and that was what attracted me to it,” he says. “The front was a bay, the passenger area a split screen. Although I loved it, and took it on surf trips at home and abroad, it only made me want a true split screen even more.”

Unable to find what he wanted, condition and price-wise, in the UK, Johnny started looking overseas and discovered thesamba.com, an American website dedicated to classic VWs.

“They were plentiful and the prices were very reasonable, because at the time the pound to the dollar was strong, and shipping costs were reasonable,” he says.

After missing out by half an hour on a Turkis 15-window Deluxe, Johnny phoned up about a mouse grey split screen, his second choice.

“I was gutted I’d missed out, but now I’m really glad I did,” he says, doing a deal over the phone for the camper that’s been part of his life ever since.

Originally owned by a US serviceman stationed in Europe, it was shipped across the Pond when his tour of duty was over under a deal between VW and the American military.

“To say I was happy was an understatement”

“When he went back to America, for whatever reason it languished in a field for many years with rats living in it,” says Johnny. “I bought it for £5,000 and a contact of mine over there got it running. To say I was happy was an understatement.”

The bus was transported to Los Angeles and shipped to the UK, landing at Harwich docks in October 2008, from where Johnny drove it home to the south coast.

“It was better than I expected, and I gave it a sympathetic preservation, not a restoration,” he adds, with just a few small areas of welding required. “I’m not into restoration – I admire the skill people put into those show cars, but I wanted a bus that had original paint.

“I like the originality, and they are more usable this way. Little dings don’t bother me.”

Since then, the ‘splittie’ has been used for holidays and shows around Europe and at home, including a memorable experience at Le Bug Show at the Spa F1 circuit.

“They let us drive round the F1 track a few weeks before the Grand Prix, all these leaky old VWs,” he says. “It’s something I will never forget, going round that track in the VW. Wow.”

In 2009, a new dynamic entered Johnny’s Dub life thanks to his then girlfriend, now wife, Lucy, who had caught the VW bug and wanted an air-cooled classic of her own.

“I started looking for a Beetle for her and I found one just north of Stockholm, a 1965 sunroof deluxe,” he says.

“I contacted the seller who spoke zero English, which is fairly rare in Sweden. Luckily his brother-in-law was English so I managed to do the deal through the third party.

To Stockholm and back for a classic VW Beetle

“We flew out to Stockholm a few days later armed with a bag of spares and tools and decided to drive it back to the UK.

“We drove just over 1,200 miles through seven countries in about four days, and we both absolutely loved it – it was one of the best road trips we’ve ever been on. The little car performed marvellously.

“From that minute I realised that’s what I really like doing, the thrill of finding a car, flying out to wherever it is, packing for as many eventualities as you can within reason, hitting the road and not knowing where you’re going to end up.”

Since that first European road trips, Johnny has been back to Sweden to bring back at least six more air-cooled Beetles, four of which have been driven home.

“Touch wood, I’ve always been lucky and made it back,” he smiles. “I take obvious spares like bulbs, cables, fuses, and cross my fingers.

“If you prepare for a breakdown, if one happens you don’t get that ‘bugger’ factor. Worst case scenario, fix it myself, limp to a garage or get it transported.”

The Swedish cars include a rust-free, barn find 1961 black Beetle bought in 2009, which Johnny still owns.

“It was a one owner car, with original paint and totally unmolested,” he says. “It just needed a mechanical check over, I replaced the tyres, had the distributor and fuel pump rebuilt and tidied up the interior, and that was it. It’s like a time capsule.”

Of course, Johnny isn’t the only one mining the Swedish market for well-preserved bargains, and he says it’s becoming harder and harder to find the right cars.

Using the Swedish system

“In Sweden there’s a registry where anyone can get the details of the people who own a car, and you can just call them and ask ‘do you want to sell your car?’” he explains.

“It’s not just us in the UK taking cars out of Sweden; they are going all over the world, including back home to Germany.

“So many of those vehicles left Germany, and people aged 40-plus remember them from their childhood and now have disposable income.

“There are also a lot going from the UK to Germany because of the very weak pound.”

One of those that returned to its homeland was a barn find bay window camper Johnny picked up from Texas.

“It had zero rust but needed all new rubbers and a full mechanical restoration,” he says. “The paint was left as original as possible, just buffed up and it came up absolutely fantastic.

“It’s the car I’m most proud of, taking it from a neglected old bus sitting in a barn to selling it to a classic car dealer in Germany.

“I sold it for £25,000 (about €28,000 at the time of writing) and found out he sold it within a month for €37,000.”

Preservation over restoration

Of all the projects Johnny has undertaken over the past 15 years, it’s the Gulf Blue Beetle in the garage which stays most true to his mantra of preservation over restoration.

Bought in 2011 from an advert on thesamba.com, the 1962 car was in a sorry state in a scrapyard in Little Rock, Arkansas, its roof bowed beneath another wreck and much of its bodywork bronzed with surface rust.

To Johnny, this patina is “beautiful” and, rather than shotblast the wings, bonnet and roof, he’s simply banged out the dents, buffed up the rusted paintwork and covered it in clear coat to protect what’s left of the original paint.

“It’s a long-term project that’s nearing completion, although it doesn’t look it!” he says of a car spotted online when he was working in the Australian outback.

“I was in the middle of nowhere, just red dirt and kangaroos, bored one day, and went on the internet looking for a project. That car was up, I called the guy straight away, paid over the phone with a credit card, and said I’d arrange the shipping when I got back to the UK.”

On the outside, the car will retain its rough and ready look, but in all other respects it’s a nut and bolt restoration that is eight years in the making, with a new interior complete and a rust-free floorpan ready to go in.

“I’ve been collecting parts for years, and have boxes and boxes of new old parts,” he says. “It might make the road this year, fingers crossed.”

Johnny, who now works in the construction industry, creating energy-efficient buildings from structural insulated panels (SIPs), says preserving the Beetle’s aged look could make it worth more money than a restored show car.

“In the last few years the survivor movement has picked up,” he adds. “At the big auctions, non restored vehicles are going for more than restored vehicles.”

Not that it will be sold once it’s finally back on the road. That fate could, however, befall the black Beetle, while Johnny also has to replace Lucy’s sunroof Beetle, which she deeply regrets selling.

“She wants the one in the garage, but I really want that one as well, and it’s hard to justify keeping the black one too,” he says. “I love them both for different reasons, the black one for how untouched it is, the blue one for bringing it from basketcase to sorted car.

“I’ll have to buy her something similar to what she had before.”

Somewhere in a barn in Sweden, there’s bound to be a VW Beetle with Lucy’s name on it…