21/12/2025
“Fast Enough to Hear the Past Catch Up”
I was somewhere between adolescence and destiny when the buggy first showed up. I was fifteen, barely legal to exist unsupervised, let alone to understand what a machine like that could do to a human life..
And there it was: fiberglass madness on fat tires, smelling of fuel, freedom, and bad ideas. That car didn’t just roll into my life. It rewired it. It carries a fast 2liter 914 engine, juiced by double Italian Webers breathing like opera singers on amphetamines. The throttle response is instant violence. The thing doesn’t drive, it attacks. It’s wildly fast and irresponsibly fun, utterly incapable of being subtle.
I didn’t know back then, but the moment I laid eyes on that buggy, the die was cast. Every greasy fingernail, every late night in a cold garage, every ruined relationship with “normal” hobbies? Done. Finished. Over. I was infected. And now, here I am at 47, still surrounded by old Volkswagen ghosts, still restoring the past like a lunatic archivist with a wrench, all because that buggy decided to crash-land into my teenage brain and never leave.
Back then, the buggy belonged to Michel.
Michel wasn’t just an owner. He was a force. The kind of man who taught you mechanics the old way. No manuals, no mercy, just logic, feel, and the occasional profanity when things refused to cooperate.
He was my mentor, my mechanical accomplice, my partner in a long list of activities that “legally speaking” should remain unrecorded. We built things. We broke things. We fixed them again even at three in the morning, with laughter echoing off the walls in that old garage he had next to his house, while secrets were soaking into the floor. He was a punk-rocker back in the day, so besides misfires and swears, it was the Exploited, the Dead Kennedys through the speakers.
That buggy was our shared insanity.
Fast-forward through decades of noise and life and detours, and the story takes a darker bend. The last five years… silence. A disagreement. About that damn buggy again. Pride got involved. Words were said. Contact was lost. The kind of quiet that doesn’t heal, it just waits.
And then this year, Michel passed away..
Just like that. One day he’s a voice in the back of your head correcting your torque values, the next day he’s gone. The family reached out, and in a moment that felt equal parts honor and gut punch, they told me: you should be the caretaker now.
Not owner. Caretaker.
Because this buggy doesn’t belong to anyone. It passes through us.
And here’s the strange part: when I’m behind the wheel now, hands on the steering wheel, foot buried, Webers screaming their metallic hymn… it feels like Michel is sitting right next to me. Not haunting—present. Smiling. Probably judging my shifting technique. Definitely approving the sound.
The disagreement? Gone. Dissolved in combustion and forgiveness. None of that matters anymore. What matters is that every intake roar, every vibration through the chassis, every ridiculous grin at illegal speeds is a continuation of something that started when I was fifteen and didn’t know my life was already decided.
This buggy didn’t just make me a Volkswagen guy. It made me who I am.
And now, every time I will drive it, I won’t drive alone.I'll drive with a mentor. With a friend. With a past that refuses to die. And thank God for that!
Some things are restored. Some things are remembered.
And some things like this buggy? Are simply kept alive.. .
Every time that engine fires, it doesn’t just make noise, it summons memories
Christophe
