Many of us at VW Heritage know the story of Celery and his now famous 1961 Samba, unfortunately for mainly bad reasons. Now things are looking up for it, I thought it was time I shared the tale with the world.

The van was bought in 1998 after it was imported to the UK from Sweden, it had a full camping interior installed, a years MOT and drove pretty well!

Since being in the UK its seen a pretty immense lowering job, various colour changes and numerous sets of wheels. It has been down to Cornwall for a few Run To The Suns and various weekend trips just for the sake of smoking it around.

Everything was looking pretty good for the old girl until one day it decided to have a disagreement with the back end of a Jaguar XJ6 which caused considerable damage to the bus and not surprisingly hardly any damage to the Jag.

Because it was so slammed the bumper skidded right underneath the Jag and contact was made bang in the middle of the front panel, creasing it, bending the door and smashing a headlight.

The bus was taken off the road again…….and that’s where it’s stayed since 2003. Extreme measures were taken to ‘repair’ the Samba, which involved an angle grinder and a couple of 3mm cutting discs……10 minutes later……..the front was off, 11 minutes later he wished it wasn’t!

A donor front end was picked up from Detling a few months later and stashed in the van, but that’s as close as it got to being fitted.

Now in 2010 the ‘Slamba’ has been dragged out of the garage, loaded onto a trailer and taken down to Shaun at 50-67. It only made it down a week ago and the guys there have had a good look over it and are due to start cutting and repairing this week!

I’ll keep you all updated with progress as and when I get it.

Thanks for reading – Dave

Also thanks to Shaun at www.50-67.com for his input and pictures!