The Golf GTI’s secret Northern Irish ancestry
The town of Ballymena sits more or less in the dead centre of Northern Ireland. Halfway between Belfast and Derry, it’s a typical country market town, built around an old town square that’s been modernised with a shopping centre. Mostly, it’s famous for being the hometown of Liam Neeson but for one brief moment, Ballymena […]
#Vanlife. Heroes and Villains
The appeal of Van Life is now something everyone understands. Freedom. Adventure. Self-determination. All these things are encoded deeply into how we see ourselves – and an entire industry has arisen to cater for every kind of wagon-type desire. But in the last few weeks and months of Lockdown, devotees of the #vanlife ethos have been up against it. We explore how and why we got here.
The Volkswagen Beetle
My sister was delivered by VW Beetle. Or at least, a German midwife, who happened to live up the street from us. Her identity is for me completely merged with that car. And that’s the thing about the VW Beetle. There is humanity.
Hot Hatch – featuring the Volkswagen Golf VR6
To whoever coined the phrase “hot hatch” – thank you. I say thank you because it’s made talking about the subject a hell of a lot easier. And as car nuts, we tend to talk about the little pocket rockets quite a lot (also a good phrase – thank you). Car manufacturers and consumers alike […]
PT19
If there’s one thing that always provokes a positive emotional response on Influx, it’s nostalgia. The rose-tinted view of everything just being better back in the old days when life was fun, cars were mechanical, broke down a lot, and drivers did all the work themselves. The thing is, tech is moving on and is […]
Power to the people’s car: Volkswagen Up and Polo GTI
It’s 1976. Volkswagen launches a car with no precedent. The Golf GTI creates a new sector, the hot hatchback. Credited as partly responsible for the demise of the traditional two-seater sports car in the 1970s, it was immediately a hit, and 42 years later it’s an icon which is still with us. Knowing it was […]
Karmann Chameleons: The Ghia-Styled Volkswagen
The original Volkswagen Beetle’s silhouette is as distinctive as it is ubiquitous. Curvy yes, sporty, no. But then that wasn’t part of the Beetle’s brief. Designed in 1938 to get the German masses moving, it took until 1945 for the bug-shaped car to fulfill its objective. Production was interrupted by World War II, brought on […]
VW T7 Camper – what’s coming next?
Talk about a ‘campervan’ and you’re almost certainly thrusting a picture of a VW into the listener’s mind. It’s the benchmark. The yardstick. The trendsetter. And that makes each generation of VW Camper very important. The iconic splitties and bays of the mid 20th century went on to bear new generations of cult-creators and it […]
Toe Crushers and Showstoppers. VW Camper – DubFreeze
We’re at DubFreeze 2018 – to see if there’s such a thing as a ‘typical’ campervan owner.
We’re surrounded. T2. T25. T6.
Stock. Slammed.
Style. Substance. Is there a vehicle as versatile as the Volkswagen Camper?
Before you bother trying to answer that, let’s pretend it’s rhetorical and just enjoy looking at the diversity of campervanning, VW-style. Diversity of ‘bus, sure, but of owner, too.
All walks of life. All levels of income. All senses of style – and senses of humour – are present in the camper community and reflected in their choice of camper. From slammed quinquagenarian pothole-skimmers to modern tech-brimmed Euro-NCAP-pleasers it’s all here – and all serving the same home-from-home purpose.
Mk 2 Volkswagen Scirocco – an Elegant Performer
Re-invented for the digital age in 2008, few third-generation Volkswagen Scirocco drivers may realise the last time their beloved coupé appeared was in the more analogue 1990s. It was 1992 to be precise, which means 2017 marks a whole 25 years since the second generation of the German curvy Golf-based coupé was blown away by […]