Experienced painter wanted

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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 […]

Roofs and roots Vol. III

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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 […]

Got a deal for you

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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, […]

Forthampton Motorworks

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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 […]

Addicted to rust

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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 […]

The Mystery Hole

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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 […]

Cologne petrolheads

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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 […]

Roofs and roots, Vol. II

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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 […]

Time to strip

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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 […]

20 – 15448

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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 […]

Roofs and Roots

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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 […]

Meet the Barndoor-Mafia

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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 […]

Quick update about the last post

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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 […]

One for the real nerds

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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: […]

“I was made in England”

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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 […]

How far can patina go?

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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 […]

Happy Birthday Samba!

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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 […]

Sorry, today for German speaking only ;-)

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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, […]

“Ist das Kunst oder kann das weg?”

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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 […]

Amersfoort

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  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 […]

“No, I am not going to paint it”

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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 […]

Mad in the mud

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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 […]

Can anybody help?

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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 […]

Learning German lesson II

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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 […]

another item finished

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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 […]

To all the doubters out there

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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. […]

A fresh dash

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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 […]

Another Holy Grail?

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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. […]

Girls, they wanna have…..carbs!

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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 […]

little update

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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 […]

You need a plan, man!

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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 […]

Little update, big luck

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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 […]

Happy Birthday, both of you!

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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 […]

first item ready!

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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, […]

Mark Spicer in action

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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”, […]

Corner window production

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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, […]

Lucky in Spa

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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 […]

interesting contacts

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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 […]

windshield seals

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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 […]

Handbrake cables

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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 […]

Plexiglas windows

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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 […]

Welcome!

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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 […]