Check out this gorgeous looking Karmann Ghia belonging to VW Heritage customer Martyn Crew. As you might have guessed it didn’t always look this good – but a meticulous restoration by Andy Finch at Spike’s Vintage Restorations eventually transformed it into the gleaming head turner you see here…

As is so often the case, you never know the extent of the work required on a car until you start stripping it down – and this was certainly the case with Martyn’s KG. Despite looking incredibly tidy at first glance, the silver ’71 US import was so rusty and had been so badly repaired in the past that realistically a new bodyshell would have been the most sensible course of action. However, he and Andy had a more audacious plan of attack, albeit one that would involve numerous new panels, hours of fabrication and a not inconsiderable stint with a welding torch…

Said Andy: “After a bit of poking around we discovered that the bottom 6in of the car was totally rotten, so we had to strip it back to bare metal and replace the inner and outer sills, repair the wings and nosecone and buy new panels for the rest of the car. Once we got started it was a case of ‘in for a penny, in for a pound.’”

Where repair sections weren’t an option, Andy cleverly fabricated new repair panels himself, the section including the spare wheel well up to the fuel tank being a case in point. He also had to fabricate the chassis strengtheners himself. Thoroughly nice bloke that he is, with so many hours of labour involved, Andy fitted the work in between other jobs to help keep Martyn’s labour costs down.

Meanwhile, the interior was treated to a retrim, a new hood was tailor made, the loom replaced and the engine rebuilt with a new twin carb setup. In case you were wondering, Andy plundered the 2013 Bentley colour palette for that classy Bentley Bronze finish.

With all the hard work out of the way, Martyn and Andy are looking to get the car back on the road pretty soon  – just in time for the early spring sunshine, we presume! Okay, there was a lot more work than either of them envisaged, but hey, judging by the stunning photos, the end result will surely be worth it! Great work guys…

As a personal postcript, I bought a later Europa bumper Ghia coupé for £50 back in the late 1980s – one side had been completely stoved in and it had been abandoned at Luton airport. I towed it home behind my Beetle. I had hopes of putting it back on the road but it was eventually sold for spares to a lad who owned an identical colour car so he could swap all the good bits over. Undeterred by my earlier experience I bought another KG a few years later, this time a Pearl White example for £1200. I made the classic mistake of viewing it in the snow – and not wanting to get my knees cold climbing underneath, I failed to notice the rot! I had fun in it for a while but when the MoT expired I stashed it and eventually found a buyer who offered £400 to ‘take it off my hands’. The problem back then was lack of repair panels – there was just nothing available! A very different situation exists today, thankfully, and who knows – if those cars had been around today, they would probably have made viable restoration projects!

Ian