Old Glory

With it's cool stars and stripes livery and total lack of ground clearance, Harry Nugent's Bay just gets better with age.

- James Peene

As weird as this may sound, some people don’t get the whole, aged, original and faded paint thing. They think vehicles left in their raw state are simply a restoration project waiting to happen, or the sign of a lazy owner… To be fair to them most people thought along the same lines a decade or so ago and most other car scenes still do. If you found a solid original Bus with tired looking paint and a few whiskey dents, you’d have thought great, a quick paint job and I’ll be laughing. An easy resto. Fortunately, things have moved on a bit, and there are a great many enlightened souls (in the Volkswagen world at least) who appreciate the beauty of a vehicle that looks like this right-hand drive ’69.

Having owned both fully restored and untouched original cars, we can honestly say hand-on-heart, that unless you live for polishing and sitting by the side of your car all day at shows in the fear that someone might touch it, the less shiny machine wins hands down, every time. Why? Because you don’t pitch a fit whenever someone walks down the side of it. Sticky kids and dirty dogs hold no fear for you, and even the odd dent or scratch is okay if they happen to come you way.

One man who knows this only too well is Harry Nugent, the current custodian of this Neptune Blue slammer.

Harry also owns a really sorted T5. You know the sort - low, big wheels, shiny paint and we’re sure he’ll forgive us for saying, like pretty much any other modified T5 you’ll see parked up in the show ’n’ shine at Busfest these days. Cool, but the same ol’ same ol’…

Inspired choice