Insufficient Funds

Not our words, but Steve Huggins, the owner of this ‘66 and what you’d have if you ever tried to buy it from him

- James Peene

“Insufficient funds. That’s what you should call this feature. I saw that every time I went to pay for something on my card, whilst restoring my Bus,” joked its owner, Steve Huggins. “Oh well, looks like it’s beans on toast again tonight.”

All that money, hard work and, evenings spent dining on skinheads on a raft were worth it in the end for Steve, who now knows what it takes to build the Bus of your dreams. He also freely admits that it was a big learning curve…

The majority of the hard work was carried out by the intrepid crew at Johnson Autoworks (www.johnsonautoworks.com), where a little birdy told us to speak to the owner. Ace bodywork man Simon Sparrow said: “Mate. You’ve really got to talk to Steve. He knows everything that’s been done to this Bus and he did loads of the hard work, like bare metalling to see what we needed to do before we started.

“Steve lives round the corner from me and I’d seen this Bus sitting outside his house. It was supposedly an east coast Bus, but for a California Bus it was really rotten. By that, I mean it was really bad. It needed everything.”

Fire sale

So what’s the crack? How did Steve come to own such a rough diamond? He reveals: “I’ve been into VWs since I was stationed in Germany, but had never actually owned one before. I used to go to car shows when I was in the army out there, and it was always the VWs I was drawn to.

“I found this one advertised on eBay. It was owned by a chap who’d sold his flat to start a VW restoration business in Sudbury, but his unit was destroyed in a fire, and the insurance never paid out so he was selling this and an Early Bay. I’ve often wondered what became of him and hope he it all worked okay for him in the end.