Archie is a forester who owns a rural property on the edge of Taupo township. Early in his working career, he was a mechanic and he still enjoys working on the old cars he cut his teeth on. A favourite of his was the Volkswagen Beetle because of its simplicity of design and relative ease of repair.
While Archie was doing his apprenticeship the beach buggy era was in full swing and Bugs of all shapes and sizes were appearing in just about every motor magazine he picked up. At the time he thought it would be a fun car to build but, as often happens, life continued and the dream of building a beach buggy would remain just that. That is until 2015, almost 50 years after the beach buggy fad had ended.
In 2015 with a bit of spare cash on hand, Archie found an old Beetle in Napier that would serve perfectly as a donor car. Once he got it home, he discovered – can you believe it? – it was not as good as advertised and it would need a lot of work before it was ready to take a body. While he started work repairing the donor car, Archie
