I've been building trikes for donkeys years! I put my first one together in 1 969. It never got on the road, but boy was it radical. VW based, of course, but not run-of-the-mill. It was an amalgamation of Volkswagen and BSA with 15" over forks, and a 12" narrowed back end. Very ambitious twenty two years ago. Eleven years later, and I had established my own custom bike shop, Desperate Dan's, named after my childhood hero, but thus named because he's a character everyone identifies with. It's a name you can't forget.
For several years, 1 concentrated on radical chops and bike-engined trikes. Eventually I built another VW trike. Full space-frame, integral crash bars, and to top it all, a supercharged 1 600 Beetle engine. It would pull wheelies at 85mph. It was a one-off, designed and built to get me on an NCC run. It was (and still is) the only VW trike without a glass fibre abortion covering its intricate tubework. Because of its insect-like appearance, I called it the Preying Mantis. To say it was a hit with the rest of the club is an understatement. It won its class at every show, so the natural outcome was to refine it and put it on the market as a kit. Ten years on the Preying Mantis is still one of our most popular kits, and has been developed to the point where I can think of no further improvements.
A couple of years ago, Deja Vu occurred - you know that feeling you've been or done something before. There was an NCC run to Cumbria. Three days before the run, I realised I'd got nothing to go on. PANIC.
Some time before, when I had my old factory in Gt Yarmouth, a customer had persuaded me to graft a set of forks on to a Beetle floorpan, complete with bodyshell. He'd got the idea from a motorcycle book. And then the coincidences started to happen. Another customer had come into the shop with the same book, wanting me to build a replica of a bike featured in it. I was flicking through it when I came across the photo of the trike. Next coincidence - I had just been given an old VW Beetle, an unfinished restoration. There was a set of 23" over springers in the shop. I needed a custom vehicle on the road in three days' time. The answer was obvious. Thus the Beach Bastard was born.
Boots, my partner, clapped his hands over his eyes. 'God, not again! The workshop going mad 24 hours a day!'
So the Beetle was pushed in and I nicked the forks from the shop. The next morning it was on wheels.
He's very understanding, is Boots. When I tell him about my new ideas, he just shrugs and says 'You're mad!' Once again, no work was done on it during work hours. On the Saturday morning it was filled with petrol, a battery fitted, and Holy Shit, it fired up. Half an hour later I was on my way to Cumbria in a stars and strips painted half-Volkswagen. No tax or MoT and totally untried. For added effect, we put two female shop dummies in the back. 1 even stopped on the way and asked a policeman for directions. The name was an inspiration. I seem to be blessed with the knack of allocating appropriate names - Honda Davidson, Nasty, Nasty, Mad Dog, Lowlife to name but a few. I though about Beach Buggies. They are bastardised Volkswagens. So Beach Bastard was the obvious choice. Also, it is so crude it creates an instant impact, especially when people see it printed on the tax disc. However, after some considerable confrontation with the pen pushing, small minded government employees at the DVLC, it has been amended to Beach B'stard. They said Bastard was an offensive word and couldn't be included on the registration document, even after I sent them a copy of Collins Concise English Dictionary, which defined the word as meaning 'A hybrid' which, of course, it was.
Anyway, back to the deja vu. It was an instant hit, and the orders for replicas started coming in. Eventually it was included in our catalogue as a production kit. As with the Preying Mantis, each one we built was an improvement on its predecessor. As with the Mantis, no two are the same. To me, replication defies the meaning of customising.
At the Birmingham Show last year, Boots and myself were talking to Alastair over several dozen pints of bitter.
Alastair asked us if we'd be interested in building a Beach Bastard for his wonderful magazine, to which we both, gobsmacked and totally impressed, replied, 'No!' So the deal was struck.
1 put it down to drunken showing off, but a few months later, blowing his last 10p, Alastair phoned us to say he was on his way to the shop with a front-end write-off Beetle. Knowing it was all lies and Bullshit, we went home. I'm going to have to stop telling fibs. Alastair and Li'l Mark turned up at Harley Farm that night with a very sad looking V-dub. From the front bumper to the dashboard, it was flat. From the dashboard to the rear bumper, it was immaculate. My apologies for calling you a Bullshitter. It must have been what Boots put in your beer at the NEC.
I had previous warned the errant BSH staff that if they were coming to Leighton Buzzard, they had better bring their toothbrushes and 'jamas, and we all got seriously drunk, during which time me 'n' Alastair sang some old English folk songs, originally performed by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, which we had been known to do in the past, the pair of us being the only remaining people in the world to know the words to Mister Apollo.
The next day, me and Flavell (Desperate Dan's manic gas-axeman) chopped the Beetle in half. We had reached the point of no return.