In the fifteen years or so that I've known David, I've always been certain of one thing. He loves Beetles....well, in fact all the air-cooled things, Beetles, Buses, Kharmann Ghias, Porsche 356, Things etc etc.

Since we have been together, he's always been completely committed to getting his old Beetle, Bogart, out of his garage and back onto the road. He had it towed to Terry's Beetles when his house sale went through so they could restore it to its former glory but Luke (pictured right) gave him the bad news that it wouldn't be sensible to do that as it would cost roughly twice as much to restore as it would ever be worth.

He sadly decided to scrap Bogart and invest his money in this beautiful 1964 model that Luke had tucked away in his Dad's garden. Luke has owned the car for nearly twenty years and was feeling very guilty at letting its condition deteriorate so much so he took great pleasure in rebuilding and refitting it to a really high spec for David.

Luke is an absolute gem of a man. Completely trustworthy, you feel you'd trust him in any circumstances, and a lovely Greek Cypriot, born only twenty miles away from me, on the South East edge of Cyprus. He's two years older than me too so our roots are very closely associated. He treats us to Greek tea - tea made much as normal except for the addition of cloves and cinnamon and last time we were there, he taught me a number of Greek recipes - none of which I've had time to try yet but will over the coming weeks.

David is like a 'pig in muck' as they say. He's been anxiously awaiting this day for weeks, popping down to keep his eye on progress every week or so. Luke has taken about three months to rebuild this car so that gives an impression of the amount of work that's gone into it.

I followed the beautiful machine home in my boring Vectra estate, loaded down with the original engine and wheels from the new bug so David can restore it to original parts if at any stage in the future he decides he doesn't want his 1600cc sporty engine anymore (though I can't imagine that ever happening).