I managed to track down a ‘61 bodyshell through an online VW forum. I borrowed a friend’s car, which had a towbar, hired a trailer and set off to bring it back to the garage at my student house in Oxford. The shell was in reasonably good condition, only needing some small areas of patching.

The piece of timber running down the centre of the shell, right, is part of the wheeled frame I made up to roll the shell on.

With the repairs done, I cut a big hole in the roof! I’d grown up with my father’s Beetle and its factory fitted Golde sunroof, but had never had the nerve to fit one before. I decided that with the car in this state, now was a good time, so tracked down a used kit.

I laid the aluminium frame out and carefully measured it. Having already marked an accurate centre line onto the roof, I transferred the frame measurements onto the outer skin. After making sure there was enough roof for the sunvisors to fold up, and checking the measurements a couple more times, I began cutting... No turning back now!

These pictures show the frame and folding roof trial fitted into the new hole - a nice snug fit! I’m not sure of the manufacturer of this kit, but the usual suspects are Webasto and Britax. I was lucky to find an earlier version with a polished metal handle; later ones typically came with black plastic versions.

In no time at all the end of term came up and I had to move out of my student house - with the shell in primer we loaded it into a box-van and drove it over to mum’s to join the chassis until I found a new, more permanent place to live (with a garage!).

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