Carvell's Beetle: The best vintage car in Uganda

There are a number of old Volkswagen Beetles on Ugandan roads. It is by far the commonest vintage car in the country.

At this year's Classic and Vintage Auto Show in Kampala, there was correspondingly a big number of Beetles. However, one factor made Leslie Carvell's purple Beetle win a gold medal at the auto show. The car sparkles!

Carvell, the general manager of Nile River Explorers, a water-rafting company based in Jinja, says she bought her Beetle second-hand in England in 1998 and shipped it to Mombasa from where she drove it to Jinja in 2001. 

"It is my daily and only car. I drive it everyday and people just can't stop admiring it on the way," says Carvell.

It was in pieces the time she bought it because the previous owner had started working on it but never finished it. She and a friend managed to put it together. The Beetle is a 1970 model, making it 46 years old car. It runs on a 1,300cc petrol engine.

"I do about 6-7km on a litre of petrol though like any other car, it consumes more fuel doing several shorter distances," she explains.

Carvell was a truck driver for a tour company in England where she drove tourists to India, Zimbabwe, Uganda and other destinations for over two years. She started frequenting Uganda as a tour guide between 1993 and 1994. In 2001, she came to settle permanently in Uganda.

"I call the car Percy Beetle after I found the name ‘Percy' inscribed on the engine by the first owner," says Carvell. 

She says in 2014, she went around the country, covering 2,000km from Jinja to Entebbe to Lake Mburo to Lake Bunyonyi to Kisoro to Fort Portal to see the chimpanzees to Murchison Falls and back.

"I find the Beetle, my dream car, very reliable and bouncy because of the good suspension. When am on a murrum road or hit a bump, it bounces up, down softly," adds Carvell.

"One time while driving in Hoima, a traffic policeman holding a copy of the New Vision stopped me, and asked if it is the car he was seeing in the paper. I was like how many purple Beetles do you see driven by a woman? Of course, it was the one," says Carvell.

Pimping the Beetle

Carvell says she has not changed much on her 46-year-old car. "I changed the seat covers by redressing all the seats, dressed the whole interior, changed the brakes, clutch, shock absorbers and re-sprayed it with this sparkling purple colour."

She changed the tyres five years ago. The car spots shiny rims and wheel bands that Carvell says she bought to enhance the look of her Beetle.

It still has its original front and rear bumpers. Being a traveller who is always on the road, a VW Beetle cuts out as a small and inconveniencing car. However, she says she puts her stuff in the space in the bonnet and she does not find it inconveniencing at all. 

"I also have a roof and rear racks I bought 15 years ago, which is made of wood and metal," she adds.

 The rear rack opens like a table and holds the picnic basket where she keeps her coffee, beverages and clothes.

She covered the floor with a vinyl carpet protector. Carvell says she has spent about sh8b on her car in the last three years, the first big amount she has spent since she bought the car.

"People have spent more buying second-hand cars yet the value of my Beetle appreciates every year, it gets richer," adds Carvell.

This Beetle won the Best Beetle Category at the 2015 Uganda Classic and Vintage Auto Show. "I did not change the car much from the previous year. I only changed the seat covers, sprayed the engine bed with matching purple colour and kept it clean," she reveals.

Maintenance

Carvell imports her spare parts and keeps some for emrgencies. "When I go to the UK, I get them and some from friends," she says.

The car broke down one time while she was at Zziwa Rhino camp when the carburetor failed. It had a hole, so she used glue and the lid of the glue tube to block the hole and the car started again. Otherwise she says she has had no major mechanical fault.

"The car is light. It one time got stuck in a ditch. My father and my dog were in the backseat so they could not get out. I saw some four men sitted at a shop drinking beer. I bought each a bottle and they carried the car back to the road. While other cars need tow trucks, I just need four men," Carvell says proudly.

She is comfortable and happy doing 50km/h on the road thought the top speed is 85km/h.  I have a mechanic who works on the car so well and does not charge much," she concludes but would not disclose who the mechanic was or where he is located.

History

In April 1934, Adolf Hitler ordered Ferdinand Porsche to design and build a cheap and simple car that could be mass produced for the people. After taking four years to finalise the design, the people's car or the Volkswagen in German, came to life.

It is said that the first design that took a similar shape to that of the final car was actually drawn by Hitler himself.

Mass production of the Beetle started in 1945 as its production had been halted during the Second World War.

The VW Beetle is a two-door, four passenger, rear-engine car manufactured by German automaker Volkswagen (VW) from 1938 until 2003. A total of 21,529,464 Beetles were produced, making it the longest-running and most-manufactured car of a single platform in the world.

In 1999, a competition to determine the world's most influential car in the 20th century put the VW Beetle Type 1 fourth, after the Ford Model T, the Mini, and the Citroën DS.