Past Kombis

What is a RAT KOMBI? …you can be truly original only once!

My first experience in a Kombi was in the late 1960”s when a friend of mine had a Late 1950’s splitty and also an oval bug. We were in our late teens. I remember this being a mid 50’s splitty as we had we had semaphores as indicators. Of course, to us it was just an old bomb kombi that always seemed to start works took us to wherever. Those were good times. In those early days as I did not have my license so I was always a passenger until 1969. My best mate David Walker and I went on a road trip to the St George, Chinchilla, South East Queensland areas when David had an extremely severe asthma attack. Here we were, at night, hundreds of miles away from the nearest town, a licensed driver who was too sick to drive and a passenger who had never sat in the driver’s seat.

David was just able to explain to me what to do to get us moving. After I had been driving for a few hours I thought this was so easy, of course it was, I was driving basically in a straight line and I didn’t have to change gears. However we eventually arrived in “The Gums” were we had a school boarding mate, Harry Neil whose family property was nearby. David made it to the Gums hospital where he stayed for a few days to get well again. Because of all this Harry met the nurse who looked after David and they have been married ever since. I also introduced David to a girl that I worked with and they have been married ever since also, maybe it’s some VW connection?

In 1983 we bought an ex-army Kombi as a family car. We then lived in Hawthorne, Brisbane and the Army Barracks were at Bulimba only a few kilometers away. They had about 10 Kombis to sell and they were incredible. Ours only had only done 9,000 kilometers, a 2.0L ,1974 Bus where the T2 had gained its final shape. They were constantly mechanically worked on by the army and were perfect, trouble was the were painted army green!

As an 8 seater this was great for the family of 6. We had great holidays in south east Queensland and also interstate. We eventually repainted the Bus light blue with a white roof, looked great. Eventually we traded in the old Bay on a Pajero from Zupps Motors at Mt Gravatt. This was a big expensive step for us buying a Pajero demonstrator!

When the first new car service was due we dropped the Pajero off and were told that everything would be ready the next day. Early the next day. Zupps rang and asked if I could come in and chat to them urgently, on arriving I walked up to the car with someone from Zupps management and the car seemed OK, until, I looked at the other side of the car to discover the complete passenger side had been smashed. I was angry and insisted on a new replacement but they were bullies and knew they had the strength to do what they wanted, just then I distinctly remember seeing our old light blue Bay peacefully drive out of Zupps. They recognized a good bus and had keep this as a vehicle for themselves…there is an omen or Karma there somewhere?

The previous Kombi we had before the SURF RAT was a 1959 splitty. An amazing T1 bus with semaphores and of course no fuel gauge. we just had to keep a note book with the millage that I had done. This was sold to a Perth Gentleman. Maybe this “Splitty” TobyG should have been on display? An incredibly beautiful and rare Bus.

This is a advertismant that we designed to Promote “TobyG”