RHD KARMANN GHIA COUPÉ
The occasion that prompted Richard Bearsby to step out of his comfort zone and buy his first ever air-cooled Volkswagen was his 50th birthday. That milestone occurred in 2018, and the late ’59 manufactured Ghia he bought for £9,000 through eBay was not quite what was described in the sales blurb.
“It probably should have been scrapped,” he says wistfully, with the full benefit of hindsight.
The true extent of the horrors that lay beneath weren’t discovered immediately. That unwelcome surprise came when Pete Morley and his team at Californian Classics started digging into it, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
The story the car was sold with was that it had been shipped to South Africa early in its life, and then back to the UK some time
