Les Hatton has covered an astonishing 360,000 miles in his 1969 Volkswagen Beetle convertible since he bought it for his late wife Frances in 1980.
Back then, it had 90,000 miles on the clock, and only covered a few thousand more before Frances’ untimely death in 1995.
“The only good thing was that I got my car back,” says Les, already a staunch VW enthusiast. “At the time I had a company car, which was a boring heap of junk.”
Over the past three decades, the 82-year-old grandfather-of-eight has driven the Beetle an average of nearly 12,000 miles a year – and that’s before you add in trips in his ‘64 Karmann Ghia convertible and the red ‘70 Beetle that was originally his daughter Elizabeth’s.
“I’ve been everywhere in it, including trips to France, Ireland, and Scotland,” he says. “It was always there, and it would always start, bom, go. For something of that age, that’s a lot of driving.
Modern cars? Boring
“Modern cars are totally alien to me. There are too many buttons, and too many controls – I’m not interested. I find them really quite boring cars.”
Les cut his motoring teeth on an NSU Quickly moped, taking it from his home in Bournemouth the 90 miles to university in Exeter, where he studied chemistry.
He graduated to a BSA Bantam and then a Villiers-engined DMW 325 twin, on which he travelled 6,600 miles in five weeks on a tour of Greece and Yugoslavia in 1965.
“It was a bit grim because it was very grey, and very communist,” he remembers. “But the whole thing cost me £90 including fuel and insurance.”
Les bought his first car, an Austin 7, for just £2, moving on to a Ford Popular before getting his first Beetle after completing a chemistry PhD in London.
“It was a white ‘60s Beetle and I took it over from my dad, and had it until it just about fell apart,” he says.
“It was so simple, and the roadholding was very good, provided you got used to the fact that it was rear wheel drive.” And rear-engined, of course.
Les and Frances, who were married in 1971, had three children – Elizabeth, Tom, and Chris – and he bought a Bay Window camper for family holidays to Wales, Scotland, France, and Germany.
His career took him to Norwich to work for chemical company May & Baker, via stints in Dagenham and Ongar, and he remembers owning a Rover P3 before he was offered a company car.
Beetle runabout
In 1980, he bought the Diamond Blue – paint code L50B – Beetle convertible for Frances to use as a local runabout.
“It had done a fair mileage, and it needed attention because it had not been looked after properly around the heater channels, which form part of the chassis,” he says. “After that it was just regular maintenance.”
That was, until about 10 years ago, when Les decided to up the ante with an extensive engine rebuild and an increase to a 1776cc block, twin Empi carbs, and a larger oil cooler, which all added up to about 90bhp.
The reason? “Because I like the fun of driving a Beetle quickly,” he laughs. “It was like shit off a shovel. I ran it in very carefully, but after that you could hear when you put your foot down that this was not an ordinary Beetle engine. It is very pokey and a joy to drive.
“It’s quite amusing when some road hog comes up too close behind you and you just put your foot down – gone.
‘You can hear it coming’
“And you can hear it coming! I remember one time my son had broken down in his 2-litre Mondeo somewhere between home and Peterborough, and I happened by chance to be going along that road.
“He heard this engine coming, and as I drove along I could see him waving me down. I towed his Mondeo behind that engine for about 80 miles, in third most of the time, pulling twice as much weight.”
Les remembers a couple of other notable journeys, including a trip to France with a girlfriend in about 2016, from Normandy down to the Loire Valley and back up to Calais.
“We got back home and the engine stopped and I couldn’t get it going again,” he says. “I suspect something went into one of the carb jets.”
Then there was a 430-mile trip to see a cousin in Stirling in Scotland in 2019.
“On the way back I felt that I was having to put the clutch pedal down a bit far to release the clutch, and I thought ‘I’ve got a thread or two loose on the clutch cable’,” he says.
“So I drove it all the way back, as much as I could, without changing gear, and I got back home and I had six strands of the wire left on the cable.”
The second longest-serving member of Les’s three-car garage is the red Beetle that he bought for Elizabeth in the mid ‘90s.
Beetle number 2
“She took the car to university with her, and had it when she was living with her husband in South West London,” he says. “She loved it, but the trouble was it was parked on the road and in the end she said ‘you can have it back now, I’ve destroyed it’.
“By the time I got it back about 16 years ago I had to spend £7,000 to get it back into the state it is now, with a respray and some mechanicals and electrics.”
It now needs another respray, but the wet winter and Les’s soggy garden put paid to that.
“It was going to be resprayed this winter, but I couldn’t get it out,” he says. “The car just sank into the grass, it was awful.
“It’s solid, it just needs a bit of care on the appearance, but it still goes incredibly well on a standard 1500cc original engine.”
Karmann Ghia convertible
Les’s most recent acquisition is the Karmann Ghia convertible, originally from San Diego but since converted to right hand drive, bought in 2019 for £19,000.
“The chap I bought it from was a bit of a shark, and I found a lot of things wrong with it, basic faults, so I went over with a fine-toothed comb when I got it home,” he adds.
“I had to have it sprayed, because it was not as good as I’d have liked. It’s not an original Karmann Ghia colour, but it was used on other VW cars of the same age.”
The Karmann was given a thorough workout on its biggest journey to date, a trip to the Isle of Man with Les’s son Tom in 2021.
“It was a memorable journey getting to Liverpool – it rained all the way,” he says. “We were dry, but my God did it rain and you’ve got a car that’s about 50 odd years old in that weather, as convertible and with the old windscreen wipers. It was grim – we thought it would never stop.”
Les and Tom did the trip with another 50 or so Karmann Ghias, spending a week on the island and completing the obligatory trip around the TT course.
“My God, up in the mountains you can’t see much, it was very misty,” he says. “All the trees have got what looks like the casing you put round the boiler, painted red or yellow so you can see them. I wouldn’t like to go round that course at 200mph on a motorbike, it’s hairy.
“We did all the usual things, went to see the mines which are water driven, and drove all around the island from the very north to the very south.”
Sorry-looking Beetle
There is one other Volkswagen lurking on Les’s driveway, a sorry-looking Beetle that has been cannibalised for parts for his other cars.
“Tom’s father-in-law found the car semi-abandoned in Lyme Regis, and we got it for a couple of hundred quid and towed it here,” he adds. “I’ve since taken bits of bodywork, bits of electrical equipment, and an axle among other things. I can’t actually remember all the things that have ended up in the three different cars.”
It doesn’t take Les long to say which car of the three means the most to him.
“I think the blue Beetle, because I’ve had it so long and I’ve done so many miles in it,” he adds.
“After I’m gone I think that car and the Karmann Ghia will go to one each of my sons, but I don’t think my daughter wants her Beetle back. She’s got quite a big Skoda, which I wouldn’t be seen dead in. I don’t consider that a VW, even though I know it technically is.”
Author’s note: A few weeks after we visited Les, he sadly passed away on August 7, 2024, aged 82. His daughter, Elizabeth, has asked for the article to be published, and said that “his cars were his pride and joy”.
