Cymon Dew says that fate may have played a part in his decision to buy his Volkswagen Golf Clipper Cabriolet back in 1990.
Three years later, he suffered a serious leg injury in a motorcycle accident that left him unable to use his right foot to drive.
“It must have been fate, because it was the first automatic car I bought,” he says, in his garden in Chislehurst, “so I had the car converted so I could drive with my left foot. All you do is move the pedal over, but in those days what could be done in an hour now was a proper engineering job.”
It meant he could keep the car he fell in love with when he spotted it for sale when driving past a Volkswagen dealer in Beckenham.
“I went past there and saw this and I thought to myself ‘do you know what? That’s all right, that’,” says the 64-year-old.
“They had two for sale, this white one and a maroon one, which was lovely, but it was £11,000 or something.
Pricey Clipper Cabriolet
“This one was £9,600, which was a lot of money in 1990, and the mental thing is I paid cash for it. I’m not well off, and I always say to myself, ‘how did I manage to spend £9,600 for myself on a car?’ But I did, and I can’t even remember how I got the money.
“My ex missus wasn’t too happy at the time. She felt it was an outlay we didn’t really need, but it turned out to be fate.”
Over the three decades since, Cymon has driven the ‘89 Clipper down to Portugal and Spain, where it lived for a number of years with his best friend Richie Hudson.
The Golf returned home in 2015, when Cymon met his current partner and gave up on plans to get a place in Spain.
After a spell off the road while he cared for his father, who was suffering from cancer, the car is now running again.
“When my dad got cancer, I spent all my time with him and I lost the enthusiasm for the car, and for everything really,” he says.
“You’ve done me a favour really, because you’ve made me get it out, and I’ve got the bug now. I want to get it running properly, get it MoTd and run around in it – although they’re now going to charge me for the ULEZ…”
Motoring journey
Cymon’s motoring journey began with an Austin 1300 in the ‘70s, bought for £365, followed by a Hillman Avenger, “the worst car I’ve ever had in my life – I don’t know why I bought it, I must have been out of my nut”.
A facelift Mk1 Ford Capri came next, in mauve metallic with a beige vinyl roof and bonnet bulge, followed by a Daimler Sovereign 4.2, “a bit of a luxury buy really”, all before the age of 21.
After selling the Daimler to fund a house deposit, Cymon bought a Cortina 1600E, and then his first Golf, a low-mileage, Mars Red, X-reg car bought from his then brother-in-law.
“It was only a standard 1100, but I put the GTi stripes down it,” he smiles. “It used to sip petrol – never drank a drop, not that I charge about. I was never a boy racer.”
And then, a mistake.
“I bought an Escort XR3, and I hated it,” says Cymon, who was working as a lift engineer. “It was a piece of crap, too bouncy, and everyone wanted to nick it.
“I was sorry I ever sold the Golf, and then I saw this one for sale. I’d always liked the convertible.”
VW Clipper development
The Golf cabriolet was designed and assembled by Karmann in Osnabrück, and first shown to the public at the Geneva Motor Show in 1979.
Although the Mk1 Golf was replaced by the Mk2 in 1984, the cabriolet version lived on, and the Clipper was introduced in 1988, with moulded, body-coloured bumpers, side skirts, and wheel-arch extensions.
As an attempt to modernise the now ageing cabriolet, it worked a treat, and sat just below the GTi convertible in the pecking order, with power provided by a 90bhp, carburetted version of the same 1.8-litre engine.
Cymon’s car was only 10 months old when he bought it, with very few miles on the clock, and it was used as his daily driver until “the dreaded motorcycle accident”.
“A girl on a pushbike hopped off a pavement, I swerved to miss her, and then ‘bang’,” he says. “I was only doing about 15mph, but the impact depressed the tibia, split the bone vertically, and smashed up my kneecap.
“I couldn’t drive for a long time, and it left me with drop-foot, so every car I have has to be an automatic adapted to drive with my left foot.
“Hence I don’t really change my cars very often…”
Switching the accelerator pedal from right to left took a bit of getting used to, but Cymon says he only slipped up once.
Mental block
“I’d been as good as gold for about six weeks, and then I had a mental block and put my foot on the wrong pedal,” he explains. “I didn’t bang the bodywork but, as I turned the wheel, the front wheel hit a wooden post and put the tracking out.
“I’m not a big fan of main dealers, but I took it to the VW garage and they had it for about a week.
“It wasn’t until I washed the car when I got it back, and got in the passenger side, that I could see a bit of overspray on the door shut, and I thought, ‘they must have banged it’.
“They denied it, so you might as well just walk away. They’d have done much better out of me if they’d apologised.”
Back in the ‘90s, Cymon remembers using the car for family holidays down to Devon and Cornwall.
“I was saying recently to my son Lewis, who now lives in Sydney, ‘do you remember when we used to have the TV on one side, you sitting in the middle, and the dog on the other side?’,” he says.
“You could just about get a bag of shopping in the boot. We stayed in a caravan, because kids love a caravan, and it was lovely.”
Next, it was off to Portugal, where Cymon was in the process of building a house with his then father-in-law in 1999.
Golf Clipper in Europe
“I drove the Golf down there as the builders were moving out,” he remembers. “I was going to go to the house, but it was February and the house was freezing cold because they hadn’t run the heating up properly.
“So I stayed for two days in a hotel in Vilamoura and then my missus came down. The house was rented out, and the people that looked after the house looked after the car for a little while, but I think it got in their way.”
While in Portugal, the Golf suffered a failed water pump.
“It got too hot and blew the head gasket,” says Cymon, “so I had the head skimmed down there.
“Funnily enough, the guy who did it was a little old fella, who I’d have thought would have been all right with older cars, but he couldn’t get it running properly afterwards.
“So I took it to the main VW dealer in Faro, and it came out running like a Rolls-Royce, for nothing as well, about 60 or 70 euros.”
The Clipper returned to the UK before heading off to Spain.
Golf’s new Spanish home
“My mate Richie lived in Coín, near Malaga, so I took the car down there and I changed it fully over,” says Cymon. “It had Spanish plates, and I had to change the headlights and put the rear fog lamp on the other side.
“I used to go down there for holidays, and he used to run around in the car, but not that much.
“I remember when I originally went down, I drove from Santander or Bilbao, I can’t remember which, down to Malaga in a day, just stopping for a wee and something to eat.
“When he rang me at 9pm, he said ‘where are you mate?’ I told him I was at the airport, and he couldn’t believe I’d got there so quickly.
“I liked it down there, and I always felt I’d get another place there, but that never happened. So when I’d got that out of my system, and I met the missus I’m with now, I thought ‘right, I’ll bring the car home’, this time on a transporter.”
The Golf was initially kept in a neighbour’s unused garage (“I used to do their garden for them”), before they sold up and it was moved to his mum’s in Beckenham.
“I was running around in it quite a bit then,” he says, before bringing the car back to Chislehurst and into another neighbour’s garage (“I do their garden…”).
Spurred into action
But there it remained while his focus shifted to looking after his father, who has since passed away, until our telephone conversation spurred him into action.
“I bought a device to suck the old fuel out, shone a torch into the tank and I’m fairly happy it’s all right,” he says. “I stuck some fuel in it, added some Redex stuff, and started it up.
“It was a little bit noisy to start with, but then the fuel and oil got round the engine and it was better – but not brilliant on idle.
“I think the carb is playing up because I haven’t been using the car, but I’m not going to fiddle with that myself. It would be a false economy for me to get involved, so I’ll get the carb done, get an MoT, and then I shall use it.
“It needs to have a good run, a regular change of the fuel, and all the rest of it.”
Moments from selling
Cymon may have rediscovered his passion for the Golf, but there was a time a few years ago when he was moments away from selling it.
“I had a guy come round and we were haggling over £500,” he says. “I wasn’t hard up for the money and my son, just before he went to Sydney, walked out of the house and as he walked past he went ‘don’t sell that, dad’, then got in his car and went.
“The bloke went ‘oh, that’s a bit strong’, and I thought to myself ‘nah, I’m not going to come down the £500, and I didn’t sell it. Now I’m glad I didn’t.”
And while the Clipper won’t be sold, it may soon have a new home as best mate Richie is returning to England and having a house built in Wittering in Sussex.
“He’s already said to me, ‘Cy, there’ll be a space in the car port for the Golf’,” he smiles. “I think he loves the car more than me. I sent him a picture when I got it out, and he sent me a message saying ‘you little beauty, she brings a tear to my eye’.
“One day, if something happens to me, Richie would have it because he’s an anorak and there’s nothing about cleaning a car he doesn’t know.
“Lewis would want it, but he’s in Australia…and Richie would love it, he’d cherish it.”
