Help save Rusty the VW Beetle!

Louis my eldest has saved since he was young for his first car. It’s something we instilled in him for many years.

This time last year his granny and grandad gave him the money to buy this old 1973 beetle (picture after we’d driven it the 1.5 hours home, with Louis proudly holding the keys on our drive) At this point we didn’t really know how much work it needed.

At the time in March I wasn’t totally buggered for money so I put a few hundred to it and we drove it home together. Since then Covid has virtually stopped me working and still does, otherwise I would certainly be funding as much as I could.

Louis and I cleaned up Rusty and we bought a few replacement bits and panels and gave it some tlc and the wonderful Simon at Speedy Spanners in Horndean swapped some panels over and got some welding sorted and checked it over mechanically and sorted the brakes etc. They were great and I highly recommend them.



So Louis was left with the money he was going to spend on a car to now get it sprayed and brought back to life. I searched and searched and got quote after quote and finally found someone who came in under what Louis had saved. I sent the guy two videos of the car, and he said it looked doable and gave me a ball park price and the guy then came and looked around for an hour and said it was better than it looked in the video so all good and we spoke a few days later and he confirmed he was happy with his quote.

At this point Louis and I got very excited. Finally it was going to get its cosmetics done and the rust gone. Louis and I started getting replacement chrome bits. New window seals. Running boards. All the bits to put on when “Rusty” came home with a new respray. A fair few hundred pounds spent now we knew the pretty part of the project was happening.

Simon kindly organised a truck and off it went to the bodywork/spray shop. Within half an hour the spray shop phoned and said it needed more work than they could do and can I get the beetle collected. They could no longer do the job.

I thought over how to break this to Louis, and there wasn’t a way. We were both absolutely gutted.

We had a long chat and decided it was best to sell it. No chance of recouping the money he and his grand parents (and I to a degree) had spent on it but it was time to call it a day.

I posted on buy and sell pages on Facebook and it went crazy.

People wanting to buy it naturally.

However the outpouring of support to get Rusty brought back from the dead was such a surprise. Everyone told me to start a GoFundMe page. Messages and comments came flooding in so here we are...

If you feel you can help then we would be so grateful and we know that Rusty would look so smart, ironically without his rust, a nice coat of paint and a slightly better stance than his current wonky sit up and beg suspension. We promise to pay your support forward in any way we can, when we can.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

We will keep you updated throughout the journey we’re on and obviously if we get to the target figure, we can get some welding and cosmetic work under way and will show you every step of Rusty’s restoration!