LITTLE URN
When I met up with Marcus Johnson, technically the owner of a Volkswagen Beetle known as Little URN, he was wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed: Vee Dub Dad – like a normal dad but cooler. He was wearing it on the strict instructions of his daughter Laura, who could perhaps be described as the spiritual owner of Little URN. If this is all a little confusing, then do bear with me as I hope everything will become clear in due course.
Perhaps I should start by saying that Marcus might now be a Vee Dub Dad, but he was first and foremost a Ford man. To be more precise, Ford Cortinas have always been his main passion, ever since buying his first one in 1976. He was oval racing at the time, and got a 2-litre Mk3 Cortina as a tow car. Unfortunately that Cortina was completely rotten as so many of them were by then, although the mechanical side was brilliant and it did indeed prove to be a great tow car.
'You wouldn't believe how hard it was to find a good Cortina Mk3 even at the end of the 1970s,' says Marcus, 'but I did eventually manage to get a better one. My dad worked in a
