Although obsessed with automobiles all of his life, up until his late sixties, Kevin Canahan only owned one brand new car.   It was a 1948 Oldsmobile V-8 sedan, which was his pride and joy for nearly six years, until in late 1953 it burnt to the ground, along with the wooden garage in which it was parked behind his parents’ house.

At the age of thirty, only a year out of an apprenticeship done through the Army Repatriation (having fought for three years in World War Two), Canahan was short of cash to buy another car.   After looking around for several months, he finally settled for a nearly new Volkswagon Beetle.

To Canahan’s delight the inexpensive little car lasted for over a decade in working order, if not perfect order.   Which, insisted Canahan, made it great value compared to the high-priced Oldsmobile, which had lasted only half the time.

“That’s hardly fair, love,” his wife Carmal would point out.   She reminded him that the Oldsmobile had caught fire, after some neighbourhood kids threw firecrackers into the wooden garage on bonfire night. (In the days before fireworks were banned from private use in Australia in the early 1970s.)

As logical as this was, Canahan had never been one to be swayed by mere logic alone, so from then on he had almost a love affair with Volkswagon cars.   In the decade that the Beetle had lasted, Canahan had been able to save up a bit of money, so for his next vehicle he splurged out on a luxuriously outfitted Volkswagon Combi-Van.   Then while he still owned the Combi, he purchased a rickety old sky-blue Volkswagon utility truck.   (Which in reality was nothing more than a Combi-Van with the passenger section cut off halfway up to turn it into an immense, oversized lorry.)

The VW lorry was already fifteen years old when Canahan purchased it, in the late 1960s, but went well enough, apart from creaking alarmingly when travelling at high speeds.   So much so that no-one liked to sit near the passenger door of the cabin.   Particularly after an occasion when Canahan’s then seven year old daughter Teresa had been sitting too close to the door as the lorry started up.   The door flew open and, with a shriek of terror Terri went flying out into the front yard.   Fortunately the lorry took a long time to warm up and had only been crawling along at a few kilometres an hour at the time.   So the only damage done was to the little girl’s pride, as she went bouncing across the front lawn on her backside, like a large rubber ball.