VW BUS RESCUE
Abandoned in a Swedish forest for 50 years, this VW ‘barndoor’ van looked too rough to be worth saving. Ben Laughton disagreed
The oldest RHD bus; found in a forest
EvEn by thE uniquE standards of VW enthusiasts, Ben Laughton stands out as being someone different. His day job is in civil engineering, but his passion is for early VWs, and he has a reputation for taking on impossible projects and returning them to the road. So when he heard of a very early VW van that was rotting in a Swedish forest, his interest was piqued. The van was in such a bad way that no Swedish enthusiasts thought it worth salvaging.
Ben thought otherwise. ‘I knew about this bus, which had been discovered back in 2008, and I was amazed that it was still lying there unclaimed: it was built in January 1952 and is believed to be the oldest RHD Barndoor in the world. In fact, it may be the oldest surviving RHD Volkswagen to have been built at Wolfsburg. Only a few RHD Beetles were assembled from CKD kits in South Africa and Ireland before it. With my rose-tinted glasses on, I had visions of it rebuilt and driving again.’
Why a right-hand-drive Volkswagen in mainland Europe? Because, unlike all its neighbouring countries, Sweden drove on the left-hand side of the road – like the UK – until 3 September 1967, when, on the catchily named , or H Day, the whole country switched to left-hand drive. However, in early 1952, a RHD VW bus would still have had to be specially ordered from the factory, so it would have been a pretty rare vehicle even when new. This one was bought by the garage owner in Töcksfors, a small Swedish town near the Norwegian border, and is thought to have been used for only ten years or so before it was abandoned.
Swedish VW enthusiast Demian Sjöberg, whom Ben had met at a Belgian VW rally, emailed pictures of the bus in its current state. They were not pretty. ‘A bunch of photos of the worst one-owner vehicle in the world!’ sums-up Ben. ‘But my partner-in-crime, Dai Watkins, had managed to buy a burnt-out 1953 Barndoor from the north of Sweden, which needed collecting, and Facing page and below As discovered in a Swedish forest, the VW ‘Barndoor’ was in parlous condition: the right-hand side fell apart when the bus was righted.
since we were both broke we decided that we could collect both of these ruined buses in one trip.’
The only fly in the ointment was that Demian had not yet managed to contact the owner of the land where the bus lay, so there was no guarantee it could be bought. Undaunted, Ben and Dai set off on an epic drive to Sweden, which turned into a sleep-deprived 2800-mile road trip that took in a VW show and social calls on several enthusiasts, besides the main reason for the journey – retrieving a pair of very rusty VW buses.
Dai’s burnt-out ’53 Barndoor was no problem: it was simply cut into halves with an angle grinder and stacked on the trailer. But there was still no word on the ’52 in the forest. Then, as the boys were literally starting to head for home, a call came from Demian to say that the land-owner, who was the son of the garage proprietor that bought the bus new in 1952, was willing to sell. No price had been mentioned but Demian thought it would be reasonable in view of the bus’s appalling condition.
Enter another hero in this restoration drama: local VW enthusiast Patric Gruvborg. It was Patric who had spoken with the land-owner and who was offering to help extract the bus from its woodland prison with his chainsaw and tractor. ‘What a nice guy,’ says Ben. ‘When we arrived at his house, he told us that he’d already been around knocking on doors to retrieve parts that had been taken off the bus as souvenirs. In this way he’d collected the VW badge from the nose, the fuel tank and spare tyre tray. It was such an encouraging start.’
The initial plan was to cut down the trees that had grown up around the bus, strengthen it with some long timbers and lift it onto Ben’s trailer with the tractor. That plan soon fell apart – as did the van. When it was rolled back onto its chassis, the whole right-hand side peeled away like a lacey metal curtain (see the picture on the preceding page). The roof was also paper-thin and about as rigid. There was nothing for it but to
unpack the angle grinder and the generator and chop the bus into manageable sections.
With the remains of two buses crammed onto the trailer and into their T5 towing vehicle, Ben and Dai set off on yet another marathon journey – more than 1000 miles in a single day. Somehow they found the energy to unload the ’52 and stash the parts in Ben’s garage when they arrived home. ‘I slept damn well that night,’ Ben recalls.
Now Ben had time to take stock and reflect on what he had bought. ‘It was bad… very bad. I’m sure some people thought it was too far gone and should have been left to return to the earth, but I was excited about trying to put it back together. I also suspected that one day the VIN tag would have been “rescued” and the bus would have been resurrected with few or none of its original parts.’
Retaining maximum-possible originality is something Ben feels strongly about. ‘The line between restoration and new-build often gets blurred. There are people who start with a VIN plate, throw the old rusty stuff away and make something new from scratch. Personally, I think that sucks – you lose the whole heart and soul of the vehicle. The challenge, and the fun here, was to save every possible scrap we could, right down to the damaged dash pod, because it’s the one that the driver used to sit behind and look at in 1952. This certainly wasn’t the easy way, but I’m convinced it was the right one for this bus.’
Ben’s conscience was tested right from the start, when he had to decide what to do with the bus’s seriously rotten chassis. ‘I wanted to keep as much of the original metal as possible, but I also wanted it to last and to be safe. What we had of the chassis was going to need so much repair that little would remain, so it was decided that full new chassis legs were needed. Fortunately, I’d picked up a New Old Stock right-hand drive chassis leg in Denmark, and we made perfect copies of the chassis rails using this for reference.
‘The rear suspension cradle was another matter. I briefly toyed with using a donor assembly, but it’s like the heart of the bus and doing that wouldn’t have felt right. Rust had eaten through the torsion bar housing and we nearly gave ourselves a hernia removing the torsion bars before any welding could take place, but the housing itself was repairable and it felt good to see some fresh metal being welded into this old crate!’
When he says ‘we’, Ben freely admits that some of the work on the bus was subcontracted out. ‘While I can turn my hand to most things, I have no problem with asking for help when I need it. I had a really good welder on the project to start with, but then he dropped out and I turned to my friends Oli and Ben Oliver at Beetle Magic in Moreton, Dorset, to help finish the project. I’d go down and help with bits and pieces,
‘Patinated wheel rims were shod with Land Rover tyres for a slightly tougher look and a subtle kustom feel’
probably get in the way a bit – but I’ve got four projects on the go at the moment, plus a full-time day job, so I tend to act more as a facilitator; doing the research, seeking out and collecting the necessary parts. Otherwise I’d still be lying on the floor and welding.’
Chassis jigged and welded up into a rigid platform, it was time to start unpicking the mass of mangled body parts to see what could be done with them. Wherever possible, Ben saved original panels, although they invariably needed fresh metal letting into the edges, where rust had eaten its way inwards. The big tool compartment that forms the floor over the front axle, between the seats, was a classic example.
Where there was simply not enough metal left to save, Ben tried to use appropriate-age donor panels. The ‘long side’ – the plain one without the sideopening cargo doors – had virtually disappeared, due to the bus having lain on that side in the damp forest. A complete long-side panel was found: only problem was that this one was from a Kombi and had a row of windows. However, the welded window surrounds inside and out were unpicked to leave just the internal vertical braces, and then a sheet of plain steel was welded in their place, retaining the swaged waistline of the remaining lower panel with its heavily weathered and sanded paint.
The roof was an even greater challenge. Ben found a donor roof in the correct Dove Blue colour to replace the rear two-thirds of the original. ‘But I really wanted to keep the front end, just to retain some of the identity of the bus,’ he continues. ‘Problem was, the right-hand side had rusted away where it had sat buried in the forest floor, so I came up with the solution of using original scraps of the rear roof to retain the front’s heavy patina.’ It was an inspired decision, one that necessitated lots of painstaking trimming and patching but which also stayed true to Ben’s principle of saving as much original metal as possible.
As for those distinctive cargo doors… ‘They were complete scrap when we hauled them from the forest, but I’m an optimist and wanted to use them. Scrap too much and what is left of the original bus?’ asks Ben. ‘I’m lucky enough to have some very talented friends and so I gave Mark Spicer of Type29 (Type29.co.uk) a ring. When he’d finished with the outer skins, they looked pretty damn good, and he made up new frames to replace the toasty originals.’ Incidentally, the ‘Barndoor’ nickname doesn’t derive from these sideopening doors – a common misconception – but from the huge engine-bay lid at the back.
As the bus slowly came together, fresh paint on the exterior was carefully blended with old to give Facing page and above Finished bus is being allowed gracefully to weather down so that original and replacement parts blend together better; Ben Laughton is about to start an even braver restoration.
a coherent finish. Primered repairs to the cab interior were similarly matched with what was already there. The inside of the load area was resprayed a uniform grey, however, and the underside was completely refinished for durability’s sake, using a rotisserie to rotate the whole shell. The result is a pleasing compromise between the conflicting demands of restoration and conservation.
Because the original drivetrain had been removed decades ago, Ben wasn’t too concerned about keeping it exactly stock, and fitted a later 1493cc engine and synchromesh gearbox rather than seek out a periodcorrect 1131cc unit and crash ’box. On the outside, what Ben describes as ‘nicely patina’d 16in rims’ were shod with Series 1 Land Rover tyres for a slightly tougher look – as is the way of the VW scene, there’s a subtle kustom feel to this bus.
Curiously, the speedometer shows a mere 915 miles recorded and, while the natural assumption would be that the van has been ‘around the clock’, the unworn condition of some components such as the foot pedals and starter switch suggests it’s just, just possible that it had covered an ultra-low mileage pottering around local villages before being laid-up in the late 1950s or early ’60s. The original warning lights and switchgear now work again in the heavily weathered pod.
Perhaps surprisingly after all this work, Ben made no attempt to stabilise visible corrosion on the outer panels. ‘Sometimes I use a mixture of linseed oil and beeswax to preserve patina on old VWs,’ he explains, ‘but I wanted to drive this bus around for a year so that old and new metal would weather down together and the joins become less visible. I felt that it needed a period of exposure before being treated.’
Sadly, Ben’s time with the bus has been curtailed by a dramatic change in his personal circumstances: his wife Mo became seriously ill last year and assets needed to be sold. Whilst ever-supportive Mo stopped Ben’s knee-jerk fire sale of all his cars and projects, several vehicles did get sold on. They included the Barndoor, which fortunately has found a good home with a sympathetic Northern Irish enthusiast.
‘I’m just glad that I managed to save this one and that Mo and I managed to have some fun in it, taking it to a few local shows and even doing a little green-laning to test its off-road capabilities,’ Ben sums up.
And now Ben has a fresh challenge to keep him occupied: another wreck of a VW bus. Rescued last year from the same Swedish forest, this one is a March 1955 single-cab that has some wonderful period signwriting on the doors and sides for Töcksfors
Järnhandel, or Töcksfors Ironmongers. ‘It’s the Töcksfors connection that does it for me,’ admits Ben. ‘And it was built just two weeks after the Barndoors ceased production.’ We can’t wait to see what miracles of resurrection he performs this time around.