You can’t Dutch this

School is a critically important time of life. Aside from the knowledge that the system attempts to impart, your character is unavoidably shaped through interactions with classmates and teachers, both good and bad.

Many people have that one teacher who helped them when they struggled, or encouraged them to higher achievements. For Dennis Kruis, owner and builder of this outrageously classy Early Bay, his life was heavily influenced by one particular primary school teacher. It wasn’t anything she did or said, it’s all down to what she drove.

“It was a 1962 ragtop Beetle in Anthracite,” he says, showing a stunning recollection from his then six-year-old memory. That level of detail pretty much sets the tone for everything Dennis has built ever since he bought his first Beetle – a 1967 Zenith Blue 1300 – at the age of 17 in 1993.

This 1970 Bay Window, however, is his finest hour yet. “With every project I say I will not do too much on the car, and then always go completely overboard,” he confesses.

This project, started over