It’s 10.30am in a field in Suffolk, and Danny Calver is reminiscing about his three-decade love affair with Volkswagens, the first beer of the weekend in hand.
With a wry smile, he remembers his first Beetle, a 1969 car in bright green he bought when he was 17.
“It was the biggest pile of rubbish I could ever have bought,” he says. “It was full of chicken wire, filler, newspaper, and it failed the MoT miserably, but I loved it dearly.
“It should have been my last Volkswagen, because it didn’t go anywhere without breaking down, but from then on I got hooked.”
Over the years, there have been periods when real life has got in the way of Danny’s VW obsession, but now he’s back with a 1962 double-door Splitscreen van imported from Texas in September 2023.
“I had progressed in my job where I had to travel quite a lot, and it was just too much to do everything,” he says. “But my sons are 16 and 22 now and I thought it’s a good time to get back into the VWs.
“Life’s too short”
“Life’s too short, I’ve lost too many friends already, and you understand when you get to 50 that it’s not like when you were aged 10 to 18 when you thought you’d live forever.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to get a van and do some shows this year’, my son’s old enough to come with me, have a few beers, enjoy ourselves and meet up with some old friends.”
We’re chatting at the Alive and V-Dubbin (AVD) festival at Haughley Park in early June, and Danny is here with his elder son Niall.
“I did the very first one of these at Stonham Barns, then it moved to Jimmy’s Farm and now here because it’s grown and grown, and that community spirit is amazing,” he says.
“It’s a weird and wonderful cult type community where everybody goes to a field, doesn’t wash for a weekend unless you’ve got an actual proper van, you drink beer, you talk rubbish, you reminisce.
“There’s no trouble, you can bring your kids, everyone’s chilled, and that’s what it’s all about.”
Danny’s Beetles
Partly thanks to that first experience with the ‘rubbish’ Beetle, Danny learned how to do his own mechanics, and bought a ‘68 Beetle, this time in black with a gold roof.
“That was really cool,” he remembers, but not as cool as the next one, a show-winning Karmann Cabriolet Beetle.
“Me and my dear friend at the time did that up, and we won a number of shows with it. It was totally Cal Look with a low stance, and everything was mint.
“In those days my wife Claire stayed at home with the kids, I’d do three or four weekends away maximum, and that was my escape – my friends, and my community.
“Claire would come along on the Sunday with the boys for show and shine, but it was generally my getaway with my mates.”
A few years ago, in one of Danny’s Volkswagen-free periods, he bought a Porsche Cayman 3.2S.
“I had a mid-life crisis,” he laughs. “That was great fun, but it was going to cause me trouble, I thought I was going to lose my licence at one point.
“In your blood”
“Until I got this van, it was about six years since I’d had my last VW, but once it’s in your blood it’s in your blood, you just can’t get rid of it.”
And so he started looking for something he’d never had before, a camper van, and spotted the ‘62 Splittie, already fitted with air suspension, for sale in Seaham, on the County Durham coast.
“I wanted a panel van or a doored van, but this came up as a double-door, and you very rarely see them,” says Danny, a chief engineer for Openreach from Ipswich.
“It was exactly what I wanted, with a nice patina, and I could leave it anywhere, not like my older cars where they’re all glossy with nice paintwork.
“I went to a show once and I left to go and get some chips and when I came back there was a whole family sitting in my car with the kids jumping up and down on the seats. I thought ‘this is crazy’.
“If somebody did dink this, I don’t think it would be too much of a travesty. It looks absolutely terrible, with the paint sunbleached to death, but it’s solid as a rock and all brand new underneath.”
Danny drove north for more than five hours on a Sunday morning in October 2023 to have a look, and had the vehicle transported home – where it didn’t meet with universal approval.
Splittie divides opinion
“My mum just looked at it and said ‘I don’t know what you did that for’,” he laughs. “My friends across the road from where I live said ‘you spent what on that? Really?’
“Some people look at it as if ‘what on earth is that doing on the road? It shouldn’t be legal’, but others think it’s really cool and love the patina.
“It’s just great – you get all the reactions. Some come past hanging out the window giving the VW sign, and others screw their noses up. It’s a Marmite club, either you like them or you don’t.”
Since getting the van, Danny has been a busy man.
“It was nowhere near what it looks like today, I’ve done lots,” he adds, fitting 44mm twin Kadron carbs to the 1641cc engine, an upgrade kit on the pulley set, electronic ignition, new brakes, and new tyres on Porsche Fuchs alloys.
“I also had the beam narrowed, and it’s been tubbed, so they’ve taken the inside of the wheel arch and moved it in,” he adds. “That’s how you get that narrow look, which I love.”
Cosmetically, Danny has added a number of personal touches, including the German ADAC badge that has been on every Volkswagen he has ever owned.
“I bought it at a car boot sale in 1996, and I absolutely love it,” he says, explaining that ADAC – Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Clubalane – is the German equivalent of the AA or RAC. “That’s followed me wherever I’ve gone. It’s part of me.”
Homemade stencilling
The night before the AVD show, he took some paint and a stencil to the van’s red paintwork.
“I’m a keen shooter, I own a couple of Browning shotguns, so I thought that’d be the thing for me,” he says. “It was an in-between hobby while I was not into the Volkswagens. I had to do something, so shooting clays was the thing of choice. I wasn’t very good at it, but I’m getting better.”
On the inside, the van was already fitted with a rock and roll bed, but Danny is keen to add a proper mattress and seat set up.
One of the van’s first outings was to a friend’s 50th birthday bash in a field in May.
“That was nice because a lot of my friends have still got their Splitties and now I have a Splittie,” he says. “ We had a band in a field and all our Splitties were there, and some T5s and T4s. It was rather cool.
“It was mine and Claire’s first sleep out, and she found it rather cosy, which I was quite surprised by. She said she’d do it again.”
VW’s show debut
This is the van’s proper show debut, just a short trip from Ipswich.
“She drove here lovely, the gearbox is lovely, and I’ve got my tools in there like with every VW,” says Danny. “I’m prepared to stop at the side of the road and fix her. Spark, fuel, air, that’s all you really need.”
Once the summer fun is over for 2024, Danny is planning to add a few more personal touches.
“I thought let’s get some out of it this year, and then we’ll look to see how much I want to spend on it,” he adds.
“I might change a few things, maybe a deluxe kit for the bumpers, freshen it up.”
Having finally got a van, and spent a fair amount on it, there’s little chance of it being sold on.
“I expect I’ll end up buying something newer, but keeping that,” he says. “I don’t think I’d ever get rid of an air-cooled van. What’s the point of getting rid of something if you can afford to keep it? It doesn’t cost anything in tax, insurance is fairly good, and there’s no MoT needed, but I check it myself because I put my children in there.
“Having something like that is a privilege, because I get that not everybody can afford it.”
