Hello Sailor!

It used to be said that the only people with tattoos, were sailors and ladies of ill repute. Times have changed and now even T4’s have got in on the act.

- Steve “autoholic” Edwards

Andy Collins started his car owing career rather inauspiciously with a Renault 12 that had been painted in a lovely shade of purple. He did redeem himself briefly with a Ford Escort Mexico 1600, but when he painted it pink with a red stripe that redemption passed quite quickly, the reason he went with those colours was they were the only paints he had in his shed at that time. He’s owned quite a few vehicles over the years; this T4 is his 95th and it turns out, it’s the one he’s owned for the longest period of time.

Both Andy and his wife Trey have enjoyed attending music festivals and motorcycle and scooter rallies over the years, Andy has owned quite a few Lambretta scooters and has been immersed in that world, up until now they had always slept under canvas. Of course they were aware of the camper vans as many of them would be at the same events, but never really paid them much attention. They’d started to go to B&B’s for weekends and it was during a stay in one of these and an evening in the pub over a New Year’s celebration that brought this T4 into their consciousness. At the time they were driving around in a BMW 530, which could reach the dizzy heights of 130 mph really easily and often did without Andy really noticing and that of course got him in trouble with the local constabulary on more than one occasion. Having a chat in a bar on that New Year’s Eve led them to viewing this van on a guy’s drive, he’d bought and partially converted it, but had lost his enthusiasm. The van had been used previously to carry highend electrical goods and came complete with a Passive Infra-Red movement detector and a full tracking system hidden under the dash. A deal, which involved the Beemer was done, which hopefully means fewer envelopes from law enforcement agencies, dropping through the letterbox.