Both these Buggies won Top 10 trophies at the VolksWorld show in

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Both these Buggies won Top 10 trophies at the
VolksWorld show in April, but one is a new build
and the other is an original ’70s car restored. Bet
you can’t tell which one is which, though…
Words: Mike Pye. Pics: ctpimaging.co.uk
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September 2006 www.volksworld.com
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53
King’s Lynn (see www.eastcoastbuggies.
co.uk). “The car was really built around the
wheels,” says Mark. “I’d done a couple
of Buggies with American Racing mags and
was looking for something different.
So I called up Kinky Mick [who else?]
(www.kinkymickshappywheelshack.com)
and asked him if he had anything really
wide in a wide-5 pattern. He said he had
some US-made Pacers that were f-a-t! They
looked crap back then – all buckled and
pitted chrome – but the offset was massive,
so I loved them. It all went from there, really.”
Vision express
“
O
Mark fitted as many things as possible under
the rear seat so the dash and bulkhead were
uncluttered. Top work!
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September 2006 www.volksworld.com
nce again, VolksWorld pushes
the boundaries to bring you
the first-ever dual studio
shoot in a VW magazine
– something we’ve not tried before but,
if you like it, we’re certainly prepared to
try again. The reason we’ve chosen these
two Buggies to showcase together is
because, while the people and the stories
behind them may be very different, there’s
one common denominator that links them
inextricably together.
Those who attended the VolksWorld
Show in April this year and had the
opportunity to check them out for real
cannot have failed to notice the quality
and attention to detail that underpins them
both – something that is fast becoming a
trademark of all the cars that come out of
the workshops of Flatlands Engineering in
King’s Lynn, Norfolk. And that, quite simply,
comes down to the vision and hard graft
And here’s where Mark’s obvious skill lies –
in having the vision to see past the initial look
of something, and not being afraid of a bit of
hard work along the way. Having had them
de-chromed, he set about straightening the
rims and prepping them for a blast of white
powder coating. Not just any old white mind,
there’s a bit of ’flake in the mix, too. Chrome
wheel bolt covers and his own custom-made
stainless spinners finish them off a treat. If
you’ve got a spare hour, ask Mark about
those spinners next time you see him…
If the wheels sound like a mission, the
The car was really built
around the wheels
”
tyres were similarly so. Mark knew what
he wanted, but couldn’t get real redbands
in a 60 profile, so rather than give up or
go for painted-on ’bands, he had them
specially made in the States. “They cost
me a fortune, but they look the part, and
that’s what’s important,” he laughs.
Mark’s background in motorcycles and his
inherent love of hot rods really show through
in the cars he builds. And he has some wise
words on the matter, too: “You don’t have
to spend a fortune to build a truly great car,
but you do have to get the basic elements
right – stance, wheel and tyre choice, and
details. It’s all in the details.” And that’s what
marks out the cars that people stop and look
twice at. It doesn’t matter whether you’re into
primer, Metalflake, alloys, steels or billet, it’s
how it all works together that counts and the
Tech spec: Mark & Maggie’s Manx
1600cc single port
NOS VW heads, mildly ported by Dan Simpson
Dual 32FRD Dell’Ortos with Scat linkage
Bosch 010 distributor
Stock mechanical fuel pump
Stock dynamo, pulleys and genuine VW tinware
Scat stainless steel valve covers and pushrod tubes
Custom-made exhaust with twin BSA Goldstar silencers
Flatlands Engineering cast aluminium fan guard
Standard 1500 Beetle gearbox with early ‘short’ axles
Rear spring plates set at 15 degrees
Stock wide-5 drum brakes all round
VW Trekker ball joint front beam with reinforcement
bars, home made Sway-A-Way-style adjusters,
standard VW needle bearings and seals
Gaz adjustable front shocks, with custom stainless steel
shrouds to look like BSA motorcycle shocks
Wheels: 6 x 15 and 10 x 15 US-made Pacers with
home-made three-bar spinners
Tyres: 195/60 and 275/60 special order redbands
put into everything they do by partners
Mark Dryden and Maggie Kirk. With
that in mind, we’ll start here with
Mark and Maggie’s own Brilliant
Sky Blue ’flake car – based around
a ’63 ’pan and a new Manx body
from Rob at East Coast Manx,
also in
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55
The secret of this Buggy is simple but stunning
and the interior is right on the money
Owner Neil Weaver’s proud of his
car. The freshly rebuilt Mk1 GP Buggy
is truly amazing – just look at it!
BSA Gold Star exhaust
silencers, cast alloy fan
belt guard and computercut numberplate
best custom cars and motorcycles always
epitomise this ethos.
While it’s the Brilliant Sky Blue mini ’flake
gel coat that grabs most people’s attention,
when you start looking around the car at the
details, you realise why this Buggy, perhaps
more than any other Buggy yet built in the
UK, has appeal across more than just the
VW scene. We’ve had seasoned hot rodders
on the phone here in the office asking about
this car and it’s the details they pick up on.
Things like the custom-made track rods with
24mm stainless nuts welded to the ends and
polished through the paint so adjustments to
the tracking can be made without damaging
the paint, the handmade stainless shrouds
on the front shocks, the almost total lack
of wiring and switches behind the custommade dash (everything bar the speedo is
hidden behind the driver’s seat), the homemade steering column, rollcage, ’screen
frame (42 x 14in, not the standard 16in
version), exhaust and the roof.
’pan-tastic!
Flatlands Engineering
With a background steeped in intense detailing, born
of years of restoring and customising motorcycles,
Mark Dryden and his girlfriend Maggie Kirk started
Flatlands Engineering three years ago. The aim was
to provide a quality parts and restoration service,
focusing particularly on floorpan restoration work and
engine detailing. It was Maggie, a long-time VW fan,
who really got Mark into the VW scene, and building
show-winning beach Buggies has just been a natural
progression for the company.
Based in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, Flatlands Engineering
can undertake all manner of engineering tasks, from
one-off sets of steel wheels to custom sand-cast
components, bespoke stainless steel work and custom
bracketry. They also offer a carefully chosen line of
high-quality Buggy products, sourced mainly in the
UK and Europe, which meet the company’s exacting
standards. Mark has asked us to pass on his thanks
to all the suppliers who have helped them make a
success of the company, in particular Tony Jarvis at
Chassis Craft, without whom he says he’d never have
got his business off the ground. Cheers, all.
Look up www.flatlandsengineering.co.uk or contact
them on 01553 828868 / 07775 903535 for further
info about Mark’s company. There’s a message board
on the website where you can ask them questions,
a gallery section showing some of the other Buggies
they’ve built and a comprehensive product list.
According to Neil, the owner of the darker GP shown
right, “When it comes to Buggies, Mark’s the man!”
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September 2006 www.volksworld.com
Underneath, the story is the same – the
shortened floorpan is delicious gloss black
– to match the smoothed side panels done
“
by local company, Brockwells, in King’s Lynn.
A Grant woodrim steering wheel looks
period-perfect but, ever the perfectionist,
Mark has now replaced this with a Superior
500 woodrim that is genuinely periodperfect. The speedo was a one-year-only
’68 item that has since been replaced
by an NOS one, this time in mph, and
this is flanked by a pair of simple, one-off,
stainless dash spears. Even the Flatlands
Engineering ’screen frame has had the
anodising stripped off and been polished
by hand, before being tinted blue to
match the Buggy.
Headlights are quality UK sourced 5¾ in
items that, while more expensive, will actually
last longer than one winter in the UK! They
now carry sidelights and indicators with, as
you might expect, the correct 21w bulbs.
This neatly does away with the need for ugly
side repeaters wired up as indicators and
”
You realise why this Buggy has appeal
across more than just the VW scene
by Bob and the lads at Prestige Bodylines
– and every single nut, bolt and washer
has been replaced with polished stainless
steel or plated versions. There’s a VW
Trekker beam on the front, used because
Mark found one in perfect condition and
because, as he says, the more weight you
can get at the front of a Buggy, the better.
It came with the reinforcement bars that go
back to the forward chassis mounting bolts,
but even these have been modified to look
nicer and to blend into the floorpan better.
And the story continues inside, the minimal
interior having been similarly detailed. Seats
are a pair of the company’s own lightweight
Buggy buckets on their own subframes,
refinished in matching ’flake with black vinyl
part-diamond pattern loose covers with
cream edging. All interior work was handled
sums up the thought process that has gone
into every area of this exceptional Buggy.
We could spend the entire feature talking
about the roof, but suffice to say it’s the best
one we’ve ever seen on a Buggy. “The hood
was over-complicated because when it is
off, I don’t want anyone to know it ever had
one…” was Mark’s simple explanation for
the complex array of hidden subframes and
clever latches in the fibreglass Manx roof
that has been trimmed with two seams to
give the flavour of an original vinyl roof.
And if you think all this sounds like a
show-only trailer queen, then think again,
as Mark and Maggie’s Buggy has barely
been in the garage since it was finished.
“We use it all the time, every night if we can
in warm weather. It’s what we build them
for, after all!” Mark concludes. Too right.
W
hile the Manx is still considered to be the
quintessential Buggy body shape, looking
across to Neil Weaver’s darker blue Buggy here,
you can see the closest and arguably the bestlooking of the myriad copycat designs that followed it. Now
almost as sought after as the Manx itself, certainly here in the
UK, the Mk1 GP is itself a great-looking Buggy, but what’s
doubly cool about Neil’s car is the fact that his was almost
certainly originally built by GP itself. “You can just tell by the
way the ’pans were cut and some of the details,” Mark Dryden
tells us. Though the Buggy wasn’t in bad shape, it was still, as
www.volksworld.com September 2006
57
Mark says, “a typical ’70s Buggy”, which
is to say it was absolutely nothing like it
is now! As it was going to be getting the
works any way, he cut the ’pan again, fitted
a pair of NOS ’pan halves and re-jigged
and tweaked the whole thing to make
absolutely sure Neil had the best possible
base to start with. On to this went new
everything, from the modified front beam
all the way through to the VSM-supplied
Rancho Pro Street Special gearbox, with
its 3.88 ring and pinion and 0.89 fourth
gear, chosen to make the most of the
Dan Simpson-built 1776cc engine.
Salt Flat Specials
“I wanted the feel of the old ’70s Buggies,
with their slot mags and simple details,”
Neil explains, “but brought up to date with
the parts that are available now.” And that’s
how the Buggy’s defining feature came
about, Neil picking the 6 and 8.5x15in
American Racing Equipment Salt Flat
Specials out of the hundreds of wheel
designs currently available. The four wheel
disc brakes were ordered in the standard
Chevy 5x4¾in bolt pattern so the wheels
This GP was built to the highest
standards. It took a Top 20 award
at the VolksWorld Show this year!
bolted straight up. Or at least they would
have, had it not been for the old Yankee
offset syndrome (a perennial problem
encountered when trying to fit wheels
designed for US cars to the front of VWs).
Mark got round this by narrowing the front
beam two inches and cutting the shock
towers down by 45mm to avoid them
“
fouling on the fuel tank. With shorter front
shocks fitted, you’d never know any of
this work had been done, so neat is its
execution. You probably also won’t have
noticed the new dash Mark has glassfibred
in so it’s now part of the bonnet, or the fact
that it’s now got a US Manx ’screen frame
and that the bonnet and dash have been
Neil’s car was almost certainly
originally built by GP itself
”
widened to suit. That’s a lot of work,
and all because Mark thinks the original
frames “look like a caravan window.” The
other thing you’ll most certainly not have
noticed is the new, extra layer of fibreglass
underneath the whole body to add some
further rigidity to the whole tub.
When it came to the colour scheme, Neil
knew the Buggy had to stay blue – that was
the original colour, after all. The grey of the
floorpan was matched from the colour on
the indicator stalk and everything underneath
is painted, not powder-coated. At first, VW
Inky Blue (a Passat colour) was chosen, but
as soon as Pete, Wayne and Paul down at
Mechspray in Rochester, Kent, got in on the
job, the custom colours came out to play.
Mechspray is a company with an
enviable reputation for consistently turning
out top-notch custom paintwork, and that
reputation comes from years of working on
customs and fibreglass-bodied Corvettes.
As Neil puts it, “They were definitely the
right people to re-paint the Buggy.” But
first Mark arranged to have the old paint
removed by light aluminium oxide blasting
– a far gentler process than sand- or
shot-blasting, but one he feels was still a
little aggressive for the ageing ’glass. The
result was, when it came to laying on the
paint, it took 13 coats of sealer before the
body stopped soaking up the paint, then
a further six or seven coats of the House of
Kolor Cobalt Blue Kandy, and that’s on top
of the primer and silver base and without
even getting into the lacquer stage!
Friends reunited
As you can imagine, bolting the body back
down on to the finished ’pan afterwards
was a nerve-racking affair, not least
24-year itch
Neil Weaver, the owner of the dark blue GP Buggy here,
is a 43-year-old sales rep for Penguin Books. He is
married to Rosie and they have two children, Alice, six,
and Alfie, one. He bought his Mk1 GP in August 1982
for £600 after seeing an advert in his local paper. At the
time, Neil was just 19 years old. “I drove it right through
the winter that first year and had huge plans for it. It was
marvellous,” he tells us. But the following spring, the
engine dropped the proverbial no 3 valve, and so started
the long process of restoration. He rebuilt the engine
himself and had the car back on the road that summer,
only for it to then fail the MOT in September. A friend
of the family offered to help Neil rebuild it and between
them they started to strip the car. The ‘friend’ then
disappeared, never to be seen again, leaving Neil with
a car now not running and in pieces. That was 1983.
Fast-forward to 2004 and the VolksWorld Show,
where Mark Dryden had his gold ’flake Buggy on display,
advertising his then new company, Flatlands Engineering.
“I saw Mark’s Buggy and it was just exactly how I’d
imagined mine all those years earlier. I got in touch
with him after the Show and asked if he’d be interested
in putting mine back together again. He said he would
and the pile of bits was delivered to King’s Lynn in
November that year. Eighteen months later, we were at
the VolksWorld show this year. It started out as a ‘just get
it back on the road’ job, but soon developed into a lot
more than that. I have tried to keep it as classic and as
subtle as possible, with some neat extra touches. I could
have bought something pretty nice for what it’s ended
up costing me, but there’d be loads of them on the road,
whereas there’s only one of my Buggy. It is the fulfilment
of the dream I’ve held for all those years, and I couldn’t
have picked a better person to help make it come true.
“I know some people may scorn me for getting
someone else to build the Buggy for me but, with my
work and a family, I simply don’t have the time any more.
If I did, I’d have sat in a cold garage and done it, but
I fully intend to do all the servicing and upkeep work
on it myself and would like to thank everyone involved,
especially my wife Rosie, for helping me finally achieve
what I started all those years ago.”
Want to see more photos? Check out www.volkszone.
com/VZi and the thread, Schmeil1’s Buggy project.
Quite the snappy dresser, eh?! Believe it
or not, that’s Neil in the picture with the
GP when he first bought it in 1983, during
the age of New Romantics
This is the same Buggy after a partial stripdown, three house moves and 20 years. Note
the body was not bolted to the ’pan all this time,
which caused all manner of headaches later on
Buggy was completely dry-built first to check fit and finish, before being dismantled, detailed
and built a second time. It takes a lot of extra time, but that’s how you get these things right
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September 2006 www.volksworld.com
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Dan Simpson, engine builder
Over the years, Dan Simpson’s name has cropped up
time and time again when it comes to performance,
air-cooled flat-four Volkswagen engines. In fact, the hot
2007cc motor in our own Art Editor Steve’s 1967 Karmann Ghia was originally built by the very same man.
And with a 14.05 second quarter mile under its belt, it’s
a great little performer.
Dan, 46, is a dental technician by trade but a
Volkswagen engine fanatic by choice. “I guess I’m just
one of the unknowns on the VW scene. I’ve been into it
for 28 years and I just love building aircooled engines.
I’ve attended all the Volkswagen shows in the UK since
the late ’70s and am a member of Hazzard VW Club in
Ashford, Kent.” As well as numerous engines for other
people, Dan has built a 2.0-litre Berg motor for his own
Manx Buggy and a turbo-charged, fuel-injected, 2332cc
motor for his five-speed 1303S. If you’re interested
in having Dan build an engine for your Volkswagen,
you can contact him on 01304 812741. Just tell him
VolksWorld sent you.
“
fitted the original GP enamel badge for
Neil – cool or what? Other components
include Luke harnesses and a Berg shortthrow shifter.
After sourcing some Beard racing seats
from the States at great expense, Neil
was gutted to discover they didn’t fit in the
narrow confines of the Mk1 body, so went
with a set of Flatlands Engineering seats
instead, but this time with the full covers
and neat GP Beach Buggy logos stitched
into them. Though they’re not shown
here, Graham, ‘Whiff’ Smith has since
also made a hood for the car and a set
of removable carpets to protect that
perfectly painted floorpan.
While modern technology enabled Neil
to post pictures of the work in progress
up on the volkszone forum where it was
followed with eager anticipation, once it
The finished Buggy stopped people dead
in their tracks at the VolksWorld Show
because the ageing fibreglass just didn’t
want to play ball, having been separated
from its floorpan for some 20 years, but
Mark persevered and, after three days of
gritting his teeth and slowly cinching down
the bolts, it all came together.
While Mark was busy screwing the
freshly painted car together and Dan was
occupied with the engine, Neil busied
himself sorting out the finishing details.
A range of Moon gauges came from the
ever-helpful Amanda Emery at The Paintbox
in Essex, while the original Mota Lita/GP
steering wheel was refurbished and put
back into service with a new billet horn
push, into which Mota Lita themselves
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September 2006 www.volksworld.com
”
got down to finishing details like the wheels
and the paint colour, things were put into
‘secret squirrel’ mode, so as not to dilute
the Buggy’s impact on its debut at this
year’s VolksWorld Show.
In truth, though, nothing could have
done that, as the finished Buggy stopped
people dead in their tracks, deservedly
earning itself a coveted position on one of
the raised plinths, where people were able
to see first hand exactly what goes into
building a Buggy fully worthy of its eventual
Top 20 place at Sandown.
It’s been a quarter of a century in the
making, so has Neil ended up with what
he wanted after all that time? “In the
beginning, I just wanted a classic beach
Buggy, I wasn’t that fussed what it was, it
just had to have external headlights, big
wheels on the back and a loud exhaust.
“I’ve got a bit more into it now, though,
and to my mind there are just certain ones
that look right. Each to their own, of course,
but what Mark has created for me is, I feel,
the epitome of the Buggy, the epitome of
a Mk1.” It sure sounds like it to us.
Tech spec: Neil’s GP
1776cc twin-port engine by Dan Simpson
Eight-dowelled, balanced Scat crank
Lightened flywheel
Scat rods, balanced
Scat C35 cam
Scat lifters
Mahle 90.5mm barrels and pistons
CB Performance 044 Magnum heads, ported and
polished by Dan Simpson, with 40 and 37.5mm valves
Bolt-up rockers with swivel feet adjusters
Twin Weber 40IDFs with GWD linkage
Bugpack oil pump filter
Mallory Unilite distributor, coil and Hyfire VI-AL Cdi
with rev limiter
Taylor Spiro Pro plug wires
Scat pulleys
Genuine VW tinware
Custom built Flatlands Engineering exhaust with
dual reverse cone mega silencers from Custom
Chrome Incorporated
Rancho Performance Pro Street Special swing axle
gearbox (3.88 r&p/0.89 4th)
CB Performance dropped spindles, CB front disc kit
Chromed carriers on the stub axles
2in narrowed front beam with modified shock towers
and custom-made adjusters
Shortened front shocks
Adjustable rear spring plates
CSP rear disc brakes
Wheels: 6x15 and 8.5x15 American Racing
Equipment Salt Flat Specials with Chevy 5 x 4¾
stud pattern
Tyres: 195/60 and 275/60 Cooper Cobra Radial G/Ts