Samba 1951

Dear VW-friends, today we can announce that the body work of the Samba is coming to an end soon. Mark is currently working full time on the remaining body jobs, adjusting and detailing here and there, but as you can see on the following pictures, the Samba´s shell looks pretty complete now. The floor pans […]

Dear VW-friends, today we have a look on the Samba´s roof again, especially on the mechanical parts, because -as loyal followers know- the outer skin of the roof, another masterpiece of Mark, is finished by now. You might be surprised to see how much of the mechanical parts did survive while relatively much of the […]

Dear VW-friends, you know the Samba was found in the Eifel, a little mountain area west of Bonn and east of the Ardennes in Belgium. It was abandoned there down in the woods in 1961 and rut there until we found it in May 2017. So I do have a personal relationship with this region, […]

Dear VW-friends, comparing a production place of the year 2021 to a production place of 1951 is unfair, but fun. At least, when comparing Mark´s little enterprise in Forthampton with the already huge Wolfsburg factory of 1950. While looking at the new pictures Marks sent me, I felt reminded of a certain famous picture of […]

Dear VW-friends, you are into vintage busses, aren´t you? So what about a little challenge, a test to check your knowledge about Barndoors? Here we go. Have a look at the following picture and just guess what part of the Samba is this? You don´t have a clue? Let´s flip it upside down and check […]

Dear VW-friends, excuse me for choosing a headline in German, let me try to explain. When East Berlin citizens stormed the Berlin Wall November 9th 1989, Willy Brandt (Germany´s chancellor from 1969 until 1974, but more important Berlin´s mayor when the East Berlin villains erected the Berlin wall in 1961) immediately rushed to Berlin and […]

Dear VW-friends, I just received a new picture from Mark showing another chapter of his amazing work. After restoring the lower part of the short side panel he now completed the short side with the swag line, the window section and the hinge pillar. He also restored the rear cargo door plus the right rear […]

Dear VW-friends, do you remember the post “you have to clean the extinct volcanoes”? It was about Mark´s incredible reconstruction of the right side front cab door inner part. If you missed it, please read it now, so you can enjoy this current post better, because here we go for a continuation. After the inner […]

Dear VW-friends, do you remember that post  “20-15448” about the poor remaining piece of the front engine compartment section where the chassis number is embossed? Have a look again to understand the progress the Samba is performing since then, because today I will report about the rear end again. Just to give you an idea […]

Dear VW-friends, first, I have to do a little postscriptum regarding the last post “Cologne petrolheads”. I missed to share with you this picture I found on EBay showing a bunch of Cologne petrolheads “on tour” in a BD-Samba. Have a look. I don´t know what happened to K-D 402, neither if it survived. But […]

Dear VW-friends, I am still trying to do some research about the Samba´s history. Up until now, we don´t know too much. It is confirmed, that the Bus was delivered on August 28th to the big VW-dealership Fleischhauer in Cologne as a demonstration car. There is this specific historic picture taken in the Eifel in […]

Dear VW-friends, remember the post „Roofs and roots“? It was about the front section of the roof that Mark finished in April last year. Now it´s time to take a close look on the rest of the roof. To demonstrate to you Mark´s excellence in body work, let´s have a look of what was left […]

Dear VW-friends, the front end of the Samba has made some serious steps forward, many of you have noticed that when we drove the Samba to Bad Camberg. To make the front look even nicer for the show I concentrated on an important detail of any Bus: the front bumper. When the Samba was found […]

Dear VW-friends, I thought a long time about publishing this post or not, because in the following I confess that we have replaced the rear engine compartment section and this is where the chassis number of any Barndoor bus is located. So we are talking in the following about replacing the chassis number, something what […]

Dear VW-friends, you waited a long time for this post, I know. I was very busy in the last two months, privat and business. The January, February and March were absolute record months at VEWIB, we never had a VW-season starting as well as this 2019. But we have a serious lack of skilled workers […]

Dear VW-friends, I never was really deeply into Barndoors, but of course things changed when I found the Samba in May 2017. I was always wondering what the meaning of the term “Barndoor-Mafia” might be. I guess now I know. It must be this scary society here: I would never call any dealer selling super-rare […]

This brave young guy here, my dear VW-friends, doesn´t need any brakes for the ride in his ´51 panel…… …..but I need some in my ´51, cause I am way less brave! So, I better finalize my job regarding the master cylinder of the Samba! Do you remember the post about the master cylinder? (in […]

Happy New Year VW-friends! For those of you who are already sober again, here is a little update about the last post. I just returned from England where I visited Mark and he confirmed that there was definitely a VW-logo for the 1951 model made of steel, with three fixing pins and a gap between […]

Dear VW-friends, last week I shared the following new picture of my little collection of historical Barndoor pics with some BD-freaks: In my eyes this picture is very interesting in many aspects. First, it shows a one-tone-color Samba. I know the VW books clearly say that there was just one single-tone color for Barndoor Sambas: […]

…because you never know!”, the Little Prince said and this Samba project,   my dear VW-friends,    is proofing that Saint-Exupéry was right and still is. Whoever dumped the Samba in 1961, he wouldn´t ever have thought that this bus will survive him. And –be honest- did you believe in May 2017 when we presented […]

Dear VW-friends,   I don´t know if Elton John really couldn´t think about a more glamourous English car but a Ford Cortina when writing this song in 1990. Is there something masochistic in the feelings of the British when reflecting about their car industry? It seems to me that it is exactly this way and […]

Dear VW-friends,   if you checked out the Samba in Amersfoort you might know it. There is no mastercylinder mounted yet. We were in a real hurry to get the baby kind of drivable for the show anyway that we decided it´s OK to rely on the handbrake only, I was not in the mood […]

Dear VW-friends,   the last update is a long time ago and there are two reasons I did not supply you with news about the project. On one hand the Samba is at Mark´s place again and all I heard from his side since I dropped the Bus there was that he was working on […]

Dear VW friends,   today 67 years ago, the Samba was finished in the Wolfsburg factory and the next day it was send to the big VW-dealership Fleischhauer in Cologne. Still today anything else of its history between August 28th 1951 and May 2017 is remaining unknown. None of my attempts to identify a former […]

Dear VW-friends,   here is a little update just for those of you speaking (or at least understanding) German. The media hype about the Samba is getting bigger and bigger. Now the current issue of the “SPIEGEL”, Germany´s oldest and most important news magazine, is featuring the Samba. Don´t try to translate it with Google, […]

Dear VW-friends,   the Samba didn´t had its original 16” wheels anymore when it was found last May. So I had to search a set of Barndoor wheels, what is not the easiest task  -and it´s pretty expensive too. But wheels you can mount still last minute during a restoration process, so I didn´t feel […]

Dear VW-friends,   the media hype about the Samba is still big. Next Tuesday a film team flies over to Bonn to make a report about the project. The Samba is currently in the exhibition hall of a big Bonn VW-dealership, the ARG-company in Bonn-Bad Godesberg. They are kind enough to make a little event […]

Dear VW-friends,   please excuse the German headline, but it is a German phrase that would sound weird if I try to translate it. This phrase (mostly narrow minded) Germans use when looking at a piece of art or something that somebody calls “art” or something that some (stupid) people might call “art”, but in […]

  Dear VW friends,     in the last weeks I did not share with you the real progress we made, because we wanted to bring a real huge surprise to the big Barndoor Gathering in Amersfoort this weekend and I didn´t want to spoil the surprise. When Mark delivered the chassis and the dashboard […]

Dear VW-friends,   today there will be just a very little update, because we are very busy to get the Samba´s chassis ready for Amersfoort. We really want to show it there on its wheels and as you can imagine this is not an easy job….. It´s now exactly a year ago since the Samba […]

Dear VW-friends,     spring finally arrived, it´s time to go outside and dig in the ground for VW-parts! “Calm down, Florian, we all know you are kind of…..hhhmmmm…..special and the winter was long for all of us, we surely desire some sun, but digging in the ground for VW-parts is nonsense!” Contraire! I am […]

Dear VW-friends,   we are really trying to bring the Samba´s chassis to Amersfoort  -rolling! Sure we want to assemble the chassis as much as possible and I would like to bolt the front bumper trim on to the front bumper. Can anyone spare with me the information about the measurement of the gap between […]

Dear VW friends,   remember this little video in the very beginning of the blog? It was on a local TV-station just the evening after we presented the Samba to the press in May 2017. The reporter who shot the video told me the following funny story. When he came back from my yard to […]

Dear VW-friends,   because the last post was the shortest post so far, I am adding this week the longest one. It is regarding the Samba´s rear shocks. I was so happy to find these extremely rare (and cause of that extremely expensive) shocks with the Samba anyway, so it wasn´t that big deal to […]

Dear VW-friends,   this post won´t be long, but it´s the most impressing one so far! I know there are still some people in the scene who do not believe that this Samba will ever hit the road again. Well, tonight I received some pictures right from England that should convince even the last disbelievers. […]

Dear VW-friends,   as you know from a previous posting I disassembled the Samba´s front axle unit before I´ve send the front and rear end of the Bus to Mark. A front axle assembly of a classic aircooled car is a complex device. Many of its individual pieces can break or at least wear out: […]

Dear VW-friends,   don´t worry, the project is still going on and it is going on fast, believe me! I just didn´t have the time to follow up here in the blog. I was in hospital and had to catch up with all the work in the office. But the Samba is a truly European […]

Two men, one mission: fresh up the dash as nice as the decklid. The poor two metal fragments in front of our feet are the point to start from   Dear VW-friends,   as you know Mark finished the Samba´s decklid perfectly. Barndoor decklids are one of Mark´s specialties, but he is also an expert […]

Dear VW-friends,   back from Rosmalen I present to you my prey. Also here I need the help from experts. Please see my questions below the pictures. If anybody could help with some answers, please send a comment.     Best regards from Bonn   Florian   A very nice owners manual dated March 1952 […]

Dear VW-friends,   today I need your help. It´s regarding my newest find, a clock which I need for my Samba´s dash. Since I own the Samba and I am much more into Barndoors as before, I always wondered what could be possible the difference between a Samba dash-clock and a split window beetle dash-clock. […]

Dear VW-friends,   as posted before I went for a short trip to Mark Spicer checking together with him the condition of the Samba´s chassis and discussing how to proceed. Mark also received in the same box we shipped rest of the Samba-chassis the Samba´s remaining dashboard pieces. This is what this little post is […]

The white VW-jacket I wear is a 61-year-old NOS-item coming from this big Cologne VW-dealership where the Samba was delivered to. If you look real close you can identify below the VW-logo the script “FLEISCHHAUER”, the dealership´s name     Dear VW-friends,   don´t worry, Germany will not try to finally conquer England beside a […]

Dear VW-friends,   there are good news from England! Number one: Mark finished the body work of the decklid, just have a look on the brilliant job he has done. “This you call ‘finished’? Don´t you want to restore it to mint condition? Come on, it´s a Samba!” “Pfffff, you still didn´t get what this […]

Dear VW-friends,   while still waiting for Mark coming home from his honeymoon trip to make some progress regarding the chassis I thought it´s a good idea to do another step forward in the meantime by doing a job that I could probably handle by my own. After the generator turned out to be the […]

Dear VW-friends,   Mark mailed me  -from India! He is still on his Honeymoon trip and won´t be back before mid of November. So, to do another step forward I am still taking care about the mechanical components of the Samba. Cause we disassembled all of the engine´s bolt-on components already, it´s an easy job […]

Dear VW-friends,   here are some good news for Barndoor owners. As mentioned in a previous article I started a project to add windshield seals for Barndoors to my VEWIB-line, just because there is nothing good on the market for Barndoor so far and I need the seals for our ´51 Samba anyway. Of course […]

Dear VW-friends,   when disassembling the engine I found some parts not original for 1951 as the manifold and the aircleaner (very normal! Which engine still had the T-aircleaner when the –technically- so much better oil-aircleaner was available?), other parts are surprisingly very correct, for example the generator and the D-regulator (I will feature these […]

Dear VW-friends,   today I don´t want to write too much, but just want you to share my joy I had when looking at the disassembled engine parts. These pictures say more than any words…. Will there be anything useable again? Sure! Just stay tuned until next week when we will have a closed look […]

Dear VW-friends,   today I can share with you just a very small update, because I am kind of ill and couldn´t work on the Samba as I wanted to. So, just to do a little step forward I pulled the fuel pump of the engine. Due to a broken lower part of the fuel […]

Dear VW-friends,   I am selling spare parts for vintage Volkswagen since mid of the 80s and I am kind of familiar to the VW-number system in a way that enables me to know the good selling items by their part number and if I don´t know the number exactly, I find the correct number […]

Dear VW-friends,   today we finally removed the gearbox from the rear chassis part and so we had to remove the rear shocks as well. Lucky enough the Samba still got the original style shocks and wasn´t “upgraded” with telescope shocks as most of all older Volkswagen were.   This kind of shock absorbers do […]

Dear VW-friends,   here are two little updates. Number one is a current picture from Mark Spicer´s decklid work. Here you can see the new inner frame he just finished. Doesn´t it look great?   The other topic is regarding an unbelievable find in the net. You maybe know that there at least five different […]

Today 66 years ago our Samba was built in Wolfsburg, but today it´s also Julian Hunt´s birthday. For anyone not knowing Julian, he is the # 1 photographer in the vintage VW-world and proud Barndoor owner himself. The pictures show both birthday candidates, Julian in one of our ´79 pickup twins driving the ´51 Samba […]

Dear VW-friends,   as promised in July („handbrake cables will be ready in August“) here we are presenting the first item we produced for the Samba: the handbrake cables! Fresh from the factory, made in Germany due to a very old original drawing. Of course we made not just a pair for our own project, […]

Dear VW-friends,   here is a little update from England. As you know, Mark Spicer shipped the decklid of the Samba to his workshop and he is just right now in welding action. So this goes out to all the haters in the various chats who keep on saying “he is never gonna make it”, […]

Dear VW-freinds,   here we go starting to produce the next item for our Samba. When we found the Samba there was one corner window still with the bus, but the other one was missing. Sure Plexiglas corner windows are extremely hard to find, especially the ones without the “Plexiglas” logo, which only the very, […]

Dear VW-friends   Last week Evelyn and Mark Spicer, the owner and restorer of the famous Kohlruss bus, visited me to have a look on the Samba wreck. It was amazing seeing Mark checking out the poor rest of the dashboard for more than 20 minutes. He was truly fascinated about little details I don´t […]

Dear VW-friends,   I was very lucky to find at the Bug-Show in Spa a Barndoor taillight. Have a look at it! I guess it is the correct one for the 51 Samba. What do the experts think? If you can confirm or disprove it, please leave a comment. I also found a central brake […]

Dear VW-freinds,   Today I received an interesting detail from the owner of the well-known 51 Samba found in Greece (see here: http://kombiclassics.com/1951_barndoor_samba/ ). He told me that the remaining Plexiglas windows of his Samba neither had any logo. As his Samba is younger than mine this information is very interesting as another hint that […]

Dear VW-friends,   my knowledge about Barndoor busses must have been very poor! So far I didn´t realize that the windshields of an Barndoor are significantly smaller than the later ones. What means I do have a lack in my VEWIB line of windshield rubbers.  Sure I wanted to add VEWIB windshield rubbers for Barndoor […]

Dear VW-friends, sure our Samba will need a pair of handbrake cables someday. As so many other parts these are different for Barndoor then for the later busses and as far as I know there are no handbrake cables on the market for Barndoor. So this a typical job for VEWIB to bring back a […]

Dear VW-friends, our Samba was made in August 1951 and it is a real “born Samba”, so it was constructed as a Samba in the first place, not later converted from a stock bus into a Samba (the factory in Wolfsburg itself really did such conversions in the early days!). Björn Schewe and Eckberth von […]

Dear VW-friends, thank you for your interest in our Samba-wreck! In this blog I would like to inform everybody who is interested about the restoration of this amazing car. “Restoration” might be not the correct term as there is not so much left of the poor bus. We got an engine, a gearbox, a front […]