Ninove… it’s been a blast

Worth an early start

up early and grabbing a prime parking spot in Ninove for the day certainly pays off when you can bask in the afternoon sunshine and watch the air-cooled world pass you by over a spot of lunch… when I say lunch, I mean a delicious Belgian waffle covered in white and dark chocolate! Hmmmm Belgian chocolate! 🙂

The great thing about the air-cooled VW takeover of Ninove for the day is that there are just so many streets and side streets that have great VW’s to discover. It’s also a great way to try to work off the waffle!

The streets of Ninove soon fill up with a huge array of air-cooled rides of all descriptions and types. Great to see this beautiful Type 34 ‘Razoredge’ Karmann Ghia a really classy looking car!

Kool Kemperink

Not often you get to see the large ‘Kemperink’ style conversion on split-screen buses, especially in such great condition as this! With a rear interior of this size you really would have a fantastic camper with plenty of headroom as well.

Good to see a few of the earlier ‘Barndoor’ split-screen buses out on the streets, some with modern twists like this one with its chrome ‘Hurst’ front bumper and detailed Porsche Fuchs… at this rate, there will be more Porsche Fuchs on vintage VW’s than on Porsche cars!

Loved this survivor looking Type 3 squareback, great stance and nicely detailed throughout, very nice! Bonus point if you know what the wheels are…

Speed Beetle

From stock to full-on drag racing, like the amazing amount of automotive engineering that must have gone into producing the stunning ‘Mister T’ race car. You would not want to be racing this beast of a bug at the lights!

This would I’m sure make one hell of a noise when you started it up and let rip!

Awesome air-cooled combo

In terms of classic cool, however, you would be hard-pressed to top this gorgeous looking split-window ragtop bug and Westfalia trailer combo, this really is travelling in vintage style! 🙂

Another tough looking badass barndoor bus, very understated with an unusual roof rack that appears to be welded into the roof, plus a very cool interior design.

The understated Barndoor exterior was complimented really nicely by this neat interior utilising some very cool looking aluminium units… apologies for the poor pic, bad reflections on whatever angle I tried! 🙁

Air-cooled details

Some VW’s have the quirkiest little details, like these rare and limited production run, ‘Crotch cooler’ vents on this very original looking split-window ragtop Beetle. An early form of air conditioning VW style. Sometimes it really is all in the details!

Some more interesting roof rack cars on display, this one looked like it was ready to be entered in the Concours d’elegance!

Better than new

Amongst all the original paint survivor buses and bugs, there were still plenty of restored and shiny examples of air-cooled vehicles. It’s good that there is such a variety in the vintage VW following.

More interesting accessory details. This cool Beetle bonnet decorative accessory had a definite hint of fifties ‘Americana’ about it.

After all of our wandering around the streets and side streets of Ninove to take in as much of the Freddy Files event as possible, we wearily made our way back to our buses for a late afternoon final brew up and bite to eat before we hit the road back to Calais again. Gez introduced me to the idea of going for some big chunky 215/75-15 BF Goodrich All-Terrain tyres, and I failed to convince them that ragtop Beetles were better than convertible Beetles, but apart from that, a great time was had by all! 🙂

An amazing air-cooled show

So time to fill up with petrol and make our way back to blighty as the sun began to slowly set. The late afternoon sun and 20ºc+ temp made for a great drive back… windows open, shades on 🙂 Have to say, it was good to confront my earlier fears, and even better that the 342-mile round trip, other than an indicator bulb connection, went off without a hitch!