THE LOVED BUG

Got a neglected classic clogging up your garage? Enjoy it while you still can, says Felix Page, who has done just that 

- Felix Page

The first day of Year 13 is sweltering - unusually hot for September. The sixth form car park is packed to the gunnels with freshly acquired Corsas and Clios, Halfords headsets pumping drum and bass through tinny 6x9s of dubious quality and the sickly, unmistakable odour of Very Cherry air freshener hanging like a thick smog in the hazy afternoon air.

Hordes of lanky adolescents fold themselves, five at a time, into cramped, well-worn superminis with Amazon-sourced 'sports' wheel trims and wannabe WRC exhausts and screech off down the high street, jeering at unlucky friends who still have to wait for the bus and arguing over who gets control of the aux cable.

The car park empties quickly, and after five minutes there is only one that has yet to join the raucous, revving convoy. It would be nearly silent, were it not for the ear-splitting, offbeat clatter of an air-cooled flat four wheezing through a perforated manifold, and the exaggerated, exasperated groaning of the three unlucky individuals who have asked for a lift home, without realising that means waiting while the engine comes up to temperature. "I might as well have walked," mutters one. "It's not like you've got air-con in there, either."

The car is mine: a 1972 Volkswagen 1302 S 'Super Beetle', the one with the more bulbous front end and MacPherson - rather than beam suspension "shared with the Porsche 924", I tell anyone who will listen, and a few who won't. It's a peach too: solid bodywork all round, original seats and headlining, intact inner arches and a working original stereo - the novelty of which wears off when we discover it can only receive long-wave stations. The engine, meanwhile, is the most powerful ever fitted to a Beetle in Germany, mustering up a spicy 60bhp (when new) to give a 0-50mph time of just 12.3sec and a "maximum and cruising speed of 80mph-plus", according to contemporary promotional literature.