We meet the owner of the original Herbie, and take the iconic movie car out for a drive
Tom Jervis Tom_Jervis@autovia.co.uk@thomaswjervis
CINEMA has long been the architect of our passions, and seldom is this more the case than with people who love cars. Whether it be the trio of Minis in The Italian Job, Paul Walker’s Nissan Skyline in The Fast and Furious or Steve McQueen’s Ford Mustang in Bullitt, many of us can trace our love for all things four-wheeled to a film we watched years ago.
For Luke Theochari, that film was The Love Bug. It was adapted from the book Car, Boy, Girl, and Luke went to see the movie on its release all the way back in 1969. He fell in love with Volkswagen Beetles, kickstarting a lifelong association with the iconic ‘People’s Car’.
After establishing Terry’s Beetle Services in 1986 alongside friend Peter Engelzos, Luke went on to become the go-to specialist for VW bugs, building race-winning, 1,000bhp dragsters, and restoring VW Type 2 buses for the likes of Jamie Oliver and Jenson Button.
But what does this have to do with Herbie? After a heart attack in 2005, Luke sought to reignite his passion for what got him into Volkswagen in the first place and began searching for Herbie himself. We say “himself”, because Luke is very keen to point out that Herbie is not a car, but a living, breathing individual. “It’s not an ‘it’. It’s a ‘him’,” he gently reminds us. Luckily, Herbie doesn’t seem to mind being misnomered and thankfully, he doesn’t squirt us with his windshield washers in dismay.
Anyway, after searching for some time, Luke stumbled across a man named Gregg Carr, affectionately known as Doctor Herbie in the VW community. Carr had also seen The Love Bug film in ’69 and went on to build his own replica Herbie over the years, later buying one of the eight Herbies used in filming the original picture.
Yes, you read that right: eight hero cars were used during the filming of The Love Bug, each designated from H1 to 7 and fulfilling a different purpose. In case you’re wondering, Gregg’s H6 was made up of two cars, featuring in the part of the film where Herbie breaks in half, just before the end of the big race.
Luke’s Herbie, on the other hand, is H2, and is pretty special, even among its on-film siblings. You see, in order to ke
