Decent rot free early pick ups don’t come along very often, so when we saw this stunning low mileage ’56 at Terry’s Beetles in Hanwell, we knew we just had to have it. As a promotional vehicle, nothing could be more cool!

Of course the story of where it came from, what it had been doing for the last half century and precisely how Luke Theochari at Terry’s got hold of it takes a little explaining and all adds to the feel good retro goodness of our already much loved recent acquisition.

Word has it that the phone starting ringing at the Theochari household at some godforsaken hour at night and deciding to pick up, Luke was greeted by excited scene stalwart Ivan McCutcheon who told him to turn on his computer and log onto TheSamba.com, which he duly did. Greeting Luke in the classified section was the ’56 pick up, rot free and with a piffling 4,800 miles on the clock. An email was sent to the vendor, a deal agreed at the crack of dawn the next morning and the classic gem was being unloaded at the docks a few weeks later, bound for the West London workshop.

Turns out the pick up, which originated from Vancouver, Canada, was a working vehicle with a water pump and skid plate at the rear – hence the ultra low mileage. Under the scruffy green top layer of paint it was red – confirming its likely origins as a fire service workhorse. Under that was the original factory Dove Blue, but crucially virtually nothing in the way of serious rot so Luke’s been relieved of any major welding duties, the only tiny spots of weld being applied to one of the dropside sections.

The pick up was taken back to bare metal before being sprayed and the cab itself remains 100 per cent original. Because of the thickness of paint on the rear bed, Luke worked painstakingly over a period of 10 days to strip off the many layers so as not to damage any of the precious metalwork beneath.

The original 30bhp engine itself was on the back of the truck when it arrived at the port, and after turning it over gently by hand at first it miraculously fired up once the carb had been rebuilt.

So how did we get hold of it here at VW Heritage? Well, top man David Ward was over at Terry’s looking at, ahem, Porsche 993s when he spotted it in the workshop. Of course by then there was no turning back and ‘Gretel’, as we’ve lovingly named her, was ours…

Our in-house engine guru Nigel has given the engine a thorough check over so all that’s left to do is to treat it to our classic VW Heritage livery. We’ll keep you posted on progress!