He begins to dress. First he puts on jockey shorts with Beetle motifs. Then he dons a pair of trousers, ordinary enough in themselves, but at least the belt has a brass buckle in the shape of a Beetle. Now he has to choose a T — shirt from several drawerfuls of possibilities, each of them displaying some different manifestation of Volkswagen culture. Some show faithful illustrations of Beetles in all styles and from all historical periods. Some show wild, customised versions. One shows an exploded flat-four engine. Some advertise Volkswagen dealers or specialists; Volksbitz, Bugmania, Wolfsburg World, Air-cooled Heaven, Bugs to Go, Fat Volkz Inc. Others commemorate various Volkswagen events and meetings, various Bug-ins and Bug-jams and Bug-O-Ramas, national charity cruises, show-and-shines and drag weekends. He decides on a yellow T — shirt with an appliqued cartoon of a dragster Beetle, massive tyres at each corner, flames exploding from the exhaust pipes, and at the wheel a slavering, red-eyed monster from outer space dressed in full Nazi regalia. There are certain events to which you couldn’t wear a T — shirt like that but today Carlton is not going to any such event.
Once dressed, he goes downstairs past the library with its unparalleled collection of Volkswagen books, histories, magazines and technical manuals. And he can’t resist sticking his head into the billiards room for the sheer pleasure of seeing the part of the collection that lives there.
Around the walls of the panelled room, Volkswagen memorabilia are displayed like hunting trophies. Here are serried rows of hubcaps and steering wheels laid out to demonstrate changes in design and function. Likewise with speedometers and foot pedals, crankshafts and tail light assemblies, wing mirrors and distributor caps. Above the mantelpiece three plaster Volkswagens fly in a diagonal line, like a trio of ducks. Elsewhere are Beetle tea towels, Beetles that are really decanters containing Jim Beam, special recordings and video tapes of the Beetle in all its forms.
There is a desk in the corner with Beetle stationery, a Beetle ruler, a Beetle sellotape dispenser, a Beetle stapler, a Beetle pencil sharpener and a Beetle rubber. There is a small model of a Beetle set in a cube of clear plastic to act as a paperweight. There are badges of a hundred or more Volkswagen owners clubs from all round the world. Finally there are posters, postcards, stickers, calendars, sales brochures, caps, shoulder bags; the works.
Now it is time for breakfast. He prepares himself a boiled egg. When it’s had its three and a half minutes he puts it into a shiny black Beetle egg cup, then adds salt and pepper from Beetle-shaped shakers. He pours coffee from a Beetle-shaped coffee pot, and drinks it out of a mug with a design proclaiming ‘Fifty Years of the Beetle’. He eats a biscuit which he takes from his Beetle-shaped cookie jar, and when he’s finished he lights a cigarette with his Beetle cigarette lighter, subsequently flicking his ash into a Beetle ashtray.
The phone rings. That too is in the shape of a Beetle. “Hello?” he shouts into the receiver. He has to shout since the microphone is rather insensitive. “Hello who is this?” he demands.
The voice on the other end sounds angry, confused, threatening, and yet completely inarticulate.
“If you have something to say, say it,” Carlton Bax shouts, and in the absence of a coherent reply he slams the phone down.
He finishes his cigarette. He feels in his pocket to confirm that his car keys are there, dangling from an enamel Beetle-shaped key fob. Ready now, he leaves his house, trots down the steps from the front door, and goes out to the garage. Actually there are two garages. One is a long, low building at the rear of the house converted from a former stable block. It contains ten or so Beetles, and as such is hardly in itself the home of a major collection, but Carlton has made sure that these few cars are very, very special.
To begin with there is a 1937 Series 30 prototype, conceived so early in the Beetle’s development that it doesn’t even have a rear window. There’s a Rometsch-built taxi, one of the few Beetles ever to be made with four doors. Here is a Hebmuller convertible used by the Munich fire department in the 1950s. There’s a military Kubelwagen, as used by Hitler’s troops in the Second World War. Here are a couple of immaculate and completely original split-windows. There’s a Beetle-based ‘stretch-limo’, made by welding a couple of extra ‘middles’ into an ordinary saloon. There’s one of the many stunt cars used in the Herbie films; this is one that comes apart in the middle yet still continues to run. Here’s a cream and grey, lowered, louvred, dressed-up Cal look Beetle, so slick, so sexy, so shiny, so lacquered as to appear pornographic. Here is a state of the art, electric-blue Baja Beetle with its exposed engine and its stinger exhaust and its big knobbly tyres just waiting to eat up the desert.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Carlton Bax lets it be known that he has other garages in secret locations around the country, in Europe and even in America, as well as whole warehouses full of desirable Volkswagen goodies. Nor does he deny the existence of a famous, or infamous, ‘locked room’ somewhere in his house, a room that is reputed to contain memorabilia of such rarity and value as to be positively dangerous. It contains unnamed, possibly unspeakable, possibly magical, Volkswagen items that a man might lose his reason over, that a man might certainly kill or be killed for. But even while he admits the room’s existence he will not reveal its location, and he insists that its contents are strictly for his eyes only.
But today Carlton Bax doesn’t go to the garage containing his rare Volkswagens. He goes instead to a garage at the front of the house. There is a trompe l’oeil painting of an oval window Beetle on the garage door. He now unlocks and opens it to reveal…a pristine metallic grey Range Rover.
“Volkswagens are all very well to collect,” Carlton Bax thinks to himself, “but I wouldn’t really want to drive one.”
♦
A little way out of Southend, at the end of a neat, well-tended suburban street, there is a surprisingly, even suspiciously, clean and flawless Volkswagen emporium. The building is an exhilarating piece of Odeon-style seaside deco, painted a gleaming, snow-blinding white, with curving windows, asymmetrical balconies and sundecks, and curling staircases enclosed in glass-walled towers.
The spotless, marble-tiled showroom houses a row of three superb Volkswagen Beetles. They have been restored, resprayed, and generally tarted up, and the for sale signs on their windscreens reveal prices that defy belief. The workshops out the back, away from the street, are every bit as clean and well-ordered as the showroom. Tools and engine components, accessories and body panels are stacked and stored with military precision; very German. This is not some fly-by-night, rough and ready, underneath the arches kind of operation; and even the customers have a clean, sharp and, of course, deeply fashionable, look to them.
In fact the only thing that looks untidy and out of place in this setting is a podgy, shambling, greasy-haired man, who for all that he doesn’t appear to belong, still roams around looking as though he owns the place. And he does. His name is Fat Les. This is his kingdom, and the sign on the outside of the premises says, “Fat Volkz Inc.” There are no signs saying that he specialises in flat-four engine rebuilds, in complete renovations, in radical paintwork, Resto-Cal customs, etc etc. There is no need for any such sign. If you need Fat Les’s services you’ll already know all about him.
The years have been kind to Les. Once he ran his Volkswagen business from a garage in a set of railway arches. A few good business decisions, a boom in the Beetle market, the help of a couple of backers, and a monstrous bank loan, have ensured a few changes, and mostly for the better. He doesn’t miss the squalor, and he certainly doesn’t miss the poverty. He likes his new clean and efficient lifestyle. He likes the business. He likes the hip, cool image. He likes the small team of smart young guys who work for him. It’s just that sometimes he can’t stand the sight of Volkswagen Beetles.