Page 23 - Transporter Talk Issue 195

MEMBER REPORT
Back in the late 70s or early 80s, my father was on his third Beetle - a 1303S Miami Blue that unfortunately met an untimely end at the hands of a very unexperienced driver three weeks after passing his test. Anyway, at the time we belonged to the Worcestershire Volkswagen Owners Club which was an independent club and not affiliated to the National VW Owners Club. The club’s argument for unaffiliated was the lack of organised VW events in the Midlands area, except for VW Action which was then at The National Agricultural Centre, Stoneleigh, Warwickshire.
How things have changed.
In the spring of 1982, the club organised a trip to the VW plants at Wolfsburg and Hannover, which at the time were
producing MK1 Golfs and T25 / T3 Vans. Well at the age of 14, I was one very excited kid, what with having been bought up surrounded by the VW Marque.
Days before we left to catch the ferry, global events had taken the shine off the trip a little, as some Argentinian General had decided to invade a group of islands called the Falklands. Nobody even knew where they were, one of my school friends even said his Dad had told him they were off the coast of Scotland!
While the country and indeed the world focused on events thousands of miles away, my family and I prepared for our impending trip. We were going by coach via the ferry, as the Euro Star had not yet been built and we were a real island nation, cut off from the rest of Europe.
The Wolfsburg Story by Andy Jones
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