NICE ONE, SHERLOCK!

It’s fun investigating a car’s past – especially if the vehicle in question dates from the early fifties. That said, the Norwegian owner of this ’52 Beetle discovered more than he bargained for when he donned his deer-stalker

- Ian Cushway

We’ve all been there. You buy a car and immediately get the urge to find out where it’s been and who’s bum’s been sat behind the wheel before you. It’s all part of the allure of owning an old car and it lets us ‘bond’ with our new acquisition. But all too often, sadly, the only thing we manage to uncover is an assortment of anonymous names from crumpled garage bills and that’s about it. Okay, if you really get lucky there might be the feint remains of a dealer sticker, or a garage name on a keyfob which will allow you to fill in a few more holes in the car’s history. However, for 43-year-old Håkon A. Solberg, the Norwegian owner of this mostly original paint ’52 Beetle, this would never be quite enough. He was on a quest to dig much deeper, tracing his car’s past right back to its very first owner!

Beetle bits

If you know the scene, you’ll appreciate that people with Beetles from this era rarely come to own them by chance, so it will come as no surprise that our budding Sherlock has a long-held interest in Volkswagens. He commented, “My closest neighbour had a garage full of old VWs and Porsches, and from the age of six I became fascinated by them. My family drove a ’68 Squareback when I was born, and we had a ’70 Beetle when I went to primary school. In fact, me and my dad ended up restoring that car in 2007.” However, that particular Bug was just a bit too new for Håkon. No, he likes Beetles with a little more history behind them, which explains why he’s always leaned towards cars from the ’50s. His ‘baby’, as he calls it, is a low mileage ’57 Oval which he bought in 1994.