The Volksparts story...so far

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Volksparts was started in Australia back in 1978 by my good friend Nicolaas dewaal and his father George.  This was back when people didn’t really value the old VWs, so Nicolaas and George spend their time collecting all the kombis abandoned by back packers that were just left on the sides of roads. People didn’t want to fix them as there was no real value in them. 

Nicolaas and George would part them on weekends and sell the bits. Volksparts became a full time job for them in 1979 and by 1989 had moved to larger premises and employed 6 guys. They were parting hundreds of VWs, selling new and used bits, rebuilding motors, panel beating and painting, the full works!

In 1996 Nick decided to sell up, only to buy the business back in 2000 after the new owner bankrupt it ! This is when Nicks yard was stumbled Upon by Gavin Harverson who had started a company called Southwest Splitz here in the UK. Volksparts came to suppling Southwest Splitz with many Kombis and Beetles. This, in turn made Southwest Splitz one of the household names in the VW community. 

As the VWs became more and more popular, people in the UK wanted the Kombis to look better and better so Southwest Splitz found themselves building the Kombis to order. People would come in choose there colours, interiors etc, these were called full builds, as the name suggests these were quite big jobs, so work was out sourced, this is where I (Shaun) came in to the picture.

I met Gavin after he’d asked about me painting a couple of Kombis for him, we got on really well and I ended up leaving my job of 20 years restoring classic cars to come and work with Southwest Splitz. We had a good partnership for a while before Gavin and his family persued there dream of emigrating to Australia.

I ran the company for a few years with a great team of guys, & I can’t praise the these people enough, we where like a family, from the trimmers to the carpenters, everyone was brilliant and we had such good times. Then life threw one of those curve balls at me, I thought I was going to be off work for a while and sold half of the company to Richard Compton, he worked for GSF (German, Swedish & French) a parts company who supplied a lot of new classic VW parts. He knew his stuff and I thought would be well suited to run the business should I not be there, turned out I didn’t need the time off and so we continued as partnership. 

 After several years, getting through the Covid pandemic and with the staff all leaving for varying reasons a decision was made to close Southwest Splitz and for myself and Rich to trade independently.

So I decided with the help of Nick in Australia to open Volksparts UK.

And here we are………….ready for a new chapter and to continue doing what I love.