Name: Kerry Davies
The classic: VW Super Beetle
‘Both my son and daughter are Beetle enthusiasts too, which is a really special thing to share. I remember coming back from work one day, and driving behind a Beetle which looked just like my daughter’s. I called her up to tell her and she asked me, ‘has it got the Beetle bounce?’.
‘As she said that, I noticed the driver’s head was bouncing up and down with every bump in the road. It’s just a funny family term we’ve come up with: the Beetle bounce!’
Kerry Davies, the proud owner of a metallic green VW Super Beetle, shares his love of this iconic classic with both his son and daughter. ‘It all started in 1992, long before I had this green Beetle,’ he recalls. ‘In those days, I didn’t even know what a Beetle was! My son Adam was sixteen at the time, and was looking for his first car when he asked whether he could have his own Beetle. I wasn’t sure at first, but we found a ruby-red 1970 model on the side of the road with a ‘For Sale’ sign on it.
‘I had a friend called Mark Humphries who used to drag race at Santa Pod throughout the 1990s, so I asked him to view the Beetle with me and see if it was a decent buy. It turned out to be an absolute steal, so I bought it for my son as his first car. A few years later, we restored another 1970 Beetle for my daughter Helen, so we then had two Beetles in the family!’
Kerry’s own interest in Beetles actually came from his children learning to drive. They both had part-time jobs during their studies, so Kerry would accompany them to work as a supervising driver, then drive the cars back himself. ‘I grew to really love driving them,’ he recalls; ‘it certainly gave me the Beetle bug!’
Despite his son and daughter both owning a total a four Beetles between them in the following couple of decades, it was only when the Covid pandemic hit that Kerry thought about getting his very own.
