​​​​​​​Earn Your Stripes

Fashion is a funny thing. If you hold onto anything for long enough it will become cool again. Even a brown Late Bay.

- James Peene

Nostalgia is a funny thing. Depending on which decade you’re dipping into, you really have to cherry pick the best bits. With the ’60s it’s easy as pretty much everything was good. The cars, the music, the fashion, heck even the football came home!

It’s hard to pick fault with anything from that decade - especially when you’re talking about the cars and air-cooled VWs in particular. And yet, with other decades it can be a bit more hit and miss. For example in the ’90s we’re in the Mk4 Golf and T4 category and whilst we might enjoy a bit of Blur, Oasis or The Verve (the latter being infinitely superior in my humble opinion) you also had to wade through cultural dross like Barbie Girl and Celine Dion. It wasn’t all rosy. And so it was with the 1970s…

The ’70s are often referred to as the decade style forgot. Fashion? Forget about it. We’re talking crocheted waistcoats, platform shoes and corduroy. Music? Disco and Abba (don’t get me started) and as for cars? Did someone say Austin Allegro and Morris Marina?

To be fair, some of the cars were cool, and have come to look better with the benefit of hindsight, but what about the colours and styling cues? Even VW lost it a little.

Come on now, as much as you might love a Late Model Bay now, there’s no escaping the fact that VW’s styling department lost the plot when they were forced to comply with US safety regulations. Lights became chunkier and were moved to more visible positions. Bumpers became boxier and had to incorporate an element of ‘give’ under light impacts. And what on earth were they thinking when it came to colour charts? Have you ever wondered who walked into a dealership in the late ’70s and ordered a Bus in beige or dark brown?