Читать книгу How To Restore Your Volkswagen Beetle - Eric LeClair - Страница 7

PREFACE by Susan Anderson

I sometimes wonder just how high a human’s eyebrows can be raised.

“You build high-end custom Volkswagens and Porsches in a shop located in Hazel Green, Alabama?”

Yes. Hazel Green, with its bustling population of about 3,111 and a whopping four traffic lights (two of which are fairly new additions), is the home of Airkooled Kustoms. In roughly 7,500 square feet of an area aptly named Mush Island, we transform rusted-out heaps into gloriously glossy marvels of German engineering. More than that, we build kinetic art in the shape of our clients’ memories and dreams.

I use the word we loosely here. As a writer, I personally do not turn wrenches or make sparks (although I have a growing fascination for welding). My callous-free hands betray the truth: a near-complete ignorance of the nuts and bolts that go into a Beetle restoration. However, gawking at the finished product? Of that I am supremely experienced.

To tell the truth, spending so much time with the krew at the shop has ruined me a bit. When I see a standard-height VW Beetle, my nose wrinkles and the guys remind me that not everyone prefers the slammed-to-the-ground lowered stance that seems normal to me. Where others see a nice paint job, I now notice the orange peel, tiger striping, and wavy panels that are inevitable from a builder who’s not quite as obsessive-compulsive as our krew. As particular as I’ve become, the truth remains: They build cars. I write words. We do best when everyone minds their own part of the business.

The shop has received countless awards for its work, including taking People’s Choice at the Las Vegas Ultimate VW Build-Off in 2015 (for my car Miss Mabel). We have clients from all over the country. Sometimes krew members even get stopped for photographs and autographs.

We joke about being a decadeslong overnight success. The shop started as a one-man shop when founder Eric “Spook” LeClair hung his shingle after retiring from real estate. He’d dreamed of spending his days banging metal and polishing paint and jumped on the opportunity when it arrived. This was in spite of countless raised eyebrows from people who either cautioned that “nobody would pay that kind of money for a Beetle” or expressed a measure of jealousy that he’d figured out a way to get paid to do what he loves.

After some time, the shop added an employee, who was the only person to take home a paycheck for years. Eventually, two employees became three, then four, five, and now nearly a dozen, including (of all things) a writer. Each of us works in our area of genius, we have no secrets in the shop, and nearly everyone who visits comments that somehow time seems to operate differently here. Our passion is for doing it right, whatever part of it we play.

The shop has its own book: Blood, Sweat & Vintage Steel. Writing that one was easy. I just fell in love with each car we featured, then told the story of how it came to be. It was different when we were approached by CarTech to add this volume to their incredibly broad catalog of restoration books. My own enthusiasm for this art form wasn’t nearly enough. We had to figure out how to extract nearly a century’s worth of combined experience restoring Volkswagen Beetles that’s housed in the krew’s craniums and callouses into plain English so a hobbyist could follow it through his or her own restoration project.

Cue the bright lights and straight-backed wooden chair. Eventually, each krew member submitted to my bossy interrogations. “No, wait. Tell me step by step. Explain it like I’m a toddler,” was uttered daily.

They say the mark of a true expert is being able to describe complicated processes and ideas in simple ways. That the Airkooled Kustoms krew members were able to convey the information in this book to me with such simplicity that I actually began toying with the idea of swapping my keyboard for a socket set (because restoring a Beetle now seems so doable) is a testament to their enthusiasm and expertise.

This book is the result of many, many hours of interviews. Working with the fine team at CarTech to publish this book is exciting in many ways for us. First, there’s the honor of being chosen to produce this how-to guide. There are many other shops out there that could have done a very fine job if they’d been asked. Second, by getting all of this information out of the krew’s heads and into print, we now have a bit of required reading we can assign to new team members to help them get their feet wet. But the biggest reason we were delighted to have the opportunity to produce this book is that we can help educate and encourage the next generation of Volkswagen Beetle enthusiasts.

Planning to roll up your sleeves and restore your own Bug? What you’re about to do is no small feat. It’s our hope that this book will help you build the Bug you’ve been dreaming about and save you some of the aggravation that comes from doing it by trial and error.

Are you leaning toward committing the small fortune needed to have a pro build it? Just by reading this book, you’ll feel a lot less nervous during your project because you’ll understand what’s going on during every phase. The more you know, the better you’ll be at choosing and working with the shop you trust with your project, and that’s the best way to get the Beetle you really want.

Congratulations in advance. The moment you’ve been imagining—cruising on a sun-dappled street with the wind in your hair, listening to the purring of your Beetle’s engine—is closer than ever before. Now get to work!