Velvet Green SO42

Instantly recognisable as a Camper, or a Campmobile even, from the Westfalia stable. And of ‘65 to ‘67 vintage, here’s the story of why Paul and Joanne are voting green for many years to come.

- RICHARD COPPING

You might assume from a quick glance at the photos of Paul Williams’s SO42 that he’s no novice when it comes to the VW camper game. You would be right. This one, believe it or not, is his seventh. However, there’s a difference. The others, starting with a bay, and including a Fleetline and a Samba (with all the right number of windows but not necessarily the right credentials from Germany to make it genuine), plus three, eleven window buses of varying vintages, weren’t ‘keepers’. The fun was in fiddling with them and moving them on (hopefully with a little profit involved too). The plan with the SO42 is completely different. It is destined to stay with Paul and his partner Joanne until at least one of them is old and grey!

Although the SO42... That’s the designation for one of the two models produced by Westfalia between 1965 and the end of the road for German splits in July 1967... Had spent its entire life in sunny New Jersey, it didn’t look quite as it does now when Paul bought the freshly imported van from Neil in dank and drizzly Manchester in October 2016.

Okay, it was a 1966 van with a history stretching right back to its original owner, one Hillary Harriman of Somerville New Jersey who, for reasons best known to himself, had a passion for saving ‘gas’ receipts. Amongst other goodies was an acknowledgement of attendance at the ‘4th Annual Classic VW Show and Go’ held at ‘Old Bridge Township Raceway Park’ in the mid 1990s and much more recent receipts for parts to keep the old van on the road.