Odette Tokely had always hankered after a pink car.
Back in the ‘80s, her then husband had refused to spray her Mk2 Ford Escort pink because, he said, it would devalue it.
“It was done up to look like a rally car, but you could start it with a screwdriver,” she says. “I wasn’t sure how you could devalue a car that would start with a screwdriver…”
But then Odette, a learning disability nurse, spotted a tatty red and black Beetle looking sorry for itself at the children’s home where she worked in Hastings.
“The doors were hanging off, and the battery was on the floor,” she remembers. “It was owned by a 16-year-old at the home, one of six siblings who were there.
‘Can that be pink?’
“He had bought it to do up, but he obviously hadn’t been able to do it. So I said to my other half, ‘what about that? Can that be pink?’ And that’s how it started.”
She paid £150 for the 1970 Beetle 1500, which was just about running but had no MoT and was “a bit of a mess”.
Her husband, a mechanic, got to work restoring the Beetle, including some slightly dubious methods.
“We repaired it with metal road signs, because he didn’t realise you could buy the panels,” says Odette, chatting at the Beetle-Juiced festival in Suffolk.
“It was first restored in a light pink with glitter in a lacquer, so it was sparkly. I didn’t buy it because it was a Beetle – I just bought it so it could be pink.”
The work began in 1989 and on June 24, 1990 Odette and her best friend threw a tent in the back and headed from Hastings to Bug Jam at Santa Pod in Northamptonshire.
She had already joined the Sussex VW Owners Club, so it’s fair to say the Volkswagen bug had already bitten hard.
“It became law that we went to Bug Jam, because that was the first thing we ever did,” she says. “We’ve been there most years since.”
New ‘hot pink’ paintwork
And most of those journeys have been made in the same pink Beetle, although these days it sports more vivid, ‘hot pink’ metallic clothing, the legacy of a fourth restoration in 35 years a few years ago.
“It’s hard to explain what the car means to me,” says Odette, sporting pink hair for the festival. “I think it’s quite nice that I’ve managed to keep it this long, kept it on the road and kept it in the condition it is.”
Back in the ‘90s, when Odette moved along the coast to Shoreham, she helped set up a local branch of the Sussex owners club.
“The club was set up by someone in Hastings and, in the winter, getting there from Shoreham on the back roads was really hard in a Beetle,” she says, “so we set up an offshoot so that people could meet locally.
Beetle fundraising
“We used to do lots of fundraising things, like car treasure hunts, and we decorated the car like Mr Blobby with yellow plastic vinyl spots.”
Over the years the Beetle was twice restored by her former husband, both times painted the same baby pink, and once requiring a new bonnet.
“When I went up to London to get it, I realised I couldn’t get it in the car, so I bungee strapped it to the bonnet and drove home,” says Odette. “That’s the sort of thing you can do with that sort of car.
“After one of the restorations, a friend said they’d get some number plates made up, but they had them done with 282 and not 288, so we had to get that changed.”
After a while, Odette was keen to sleep in something other than a tent on her travels.
“A lot of people went from Beetles to campers as they progressed through, but I can’t get rid of my Beetle, It’s part of me,” she says. “So the next best option was the teardrop caravan, which is so light you can tow it with a motorbike.
“I thought that with a 1500cc engine I could easily tow it, although on a hill we can slow down to about 30mph.”
Volkswagen community
She says she became so heavily involved with the Volkswagen scene for its sense of community.
“It’s the whole atmosphere,” she added. “It doesn’t matter who you are or how old you are, everybody gets on, and everybody helps each other out. With mine, if it broke down, somebody would always help me out.
“After my marriage broke down, I did get a camper with my daughter. We used to go to Belgium and France as a club, and one time she couldn’t come.
“I wasn’t keen on going without her, but the club members said ‘come on’. We got to Dover and as we were going on the ferry, the clutch cable snapped, and I was ‘right, this isn’t meant to be, I’m not going’.
“They said ‘yes, you are’, and they towed me on to the ferry, got to the other side and fixed it in a lorry car park. I suppose that’s just the fun of it all.”
The Beetle has also been overseas, to France, where the club met up with a Belgian club and were led by police motorbikes on a convoy.
But about six years ago, it was clear that something needed to be done about the Bug, which was starting to show signs of its 50 years.
Something had to be done
“It had been bodged up when we first did it,” says Odette. “We hadn’t really restored it properly, and it got to a point where there was rust coming through on the roof and something had to be done with it.
“So I drew some of my pension out – my private pension isn’t worth much – and thought ‘I’m going to restore it, and enjoy it now’.”
The Beetle now looks better than ever, although Odette did have misgivings about the colour switch from pale pink to ‘hot pink’.
“I took it to a guy called Steve at Aingers Green, who is brilliant with bodywork, and he persuaded me to have it that colour,” she says. “I said ‘no, it’s always been light pink’, but he said ‘that’s a bit old school now, let’s do something more modern’.
“He mixed the paint up, so it’s the only one sprayed that colour.”
As well as the paintwork, the original seats were treated to a reupholstery and retrim in pink and black, while a reconditioned 1500cc engine with twin carburettors and electronic ignition replaced the original unit.
“It starts a lot better now,” says Odette, who now lives near Clacton in Essex, “and it doesn’t pink like it used to. At the time, we put it down to Shell petrol – I thought if I filled it up with Shell petrol it pinked, but it wasn’t that, it was just the engine. It’s lovely to drive now.”
SSP wheels also replaced the originals, which Odette had wanted to keep but they were beyond economic repair.
Since then, the Beetle has continued to be used for local club meetings and shows, and Odette has had to get used to the attention created by the new colour.
Attention grabber
“Everyone waves at you,” she says. “When we’re going down the motorway or dual carriageway people will slow down and drive beside us. And it’s like woah, they didn’t do it when it was the previous colour. And when we’ve got the teardrop behind it, everyone’s ‘wahaay’.
“If we go to the Clacton car show and things like that, I think it’s the most photographed car because all the children go ‘look, there’s a pink car’.”
So what does the future hold for a car that clearly means so much?
“I’ll keep it going,” says Odette. “If I couldn’t do the shows I wouldn’t be very happy – it means a lot to me.
“My 10-year-old grandson says to me ‘I’m having it next, aren’t I?’ I say ‘but you’re going to hot rod it aren’t you?’.
“‘No, no, no, I’ll leave it like that’. So it’s in my will to him, because he’s promised he’ll look after it.”
