He's swooning over ‘Olive'. Fantasising, hands clasped firmly on chest, staring distantly into the air-cooled, rear-mounted stratosphere and grinning as if something intimate's about to happen.
'I'm 46,” says Levi – pronounced Levee – Wilson. 'And I should know better.” But he doesn't and never will.
Olive's not a looker – practical rather than pretty. Snub-nosed, difficult to handle and can only muster 110km/hr – but then only on a good blacktop, if she's gently coaxed and only for a short while. Dependability, rather than speed, is Olive's strength.
'Always starts. Always delivers me to where I want to go.” And whenever Levi is ‘delivered', at journey's end, he will stroke Olive on the dashboard and say: 'Well done Olive.” You sense Levi wants you to think he's quietly nuts. About Olive, of course.
And he agrees that when grown-ups start anthropomorphising their cars like that, then generally it's too late for therapy. He tries to explain.
'Olive has her own personality and idiosyncrasies,” says Levi. 'And when I get into Olive and drive her, it's like doing something with someone.” Pardon the innuendo, but what Levi's saying is he also has a work car too, but there's no love there. 'It isn't a VW, it's a Toyota; it's just a vehicle to me. I get in, drive it and there is no connection.” Toyota may want to work on that.
The union with Olive is cast in quality German steel. It's forever. She won't be sold. 'God no!” says Levi. 'I will be buried with her. If not, then my son will get her.”
Every VW owner seems to have a slightly different version of how they feel about their vehicle. But they do feel. Deeply. 'They can get under your skin but I can't imagine owning anything else,” says Levi. And he's a bit smug when he says people who don't own Volkswagen secretly want to.
The Bible tells us on the seventh day God rested. The enthusiasts tell us on the eighth day he created Volkswagens. And a couple of thousand years later there's a pilgrimage to Mecca, ‘The Run to the Sun'. V-dubbers will gather at the Mount camping ground for a weekend of devotion, of worshipping the air-cooled boxer engine with four horizontally opposed cast-iron cylinders… ‘the power and the glory. Amen'.
More than 100 of them – Kombis, Beetles, buggys and baja bugs – and many and varied owners all deeply committed to the people's wagon, the Volkswagen.
'Doctors, opticians, air-conditioning engineers, an ex-policemen drawn together because we're fascinated by Volkswagens,” says Levi. 'They're great levelers. As soon as you start talking Volkswagens status goes out the window.”
Levi was brought up on mushy peas and Veedubs – he's a Pom, a native of St Albans in Hertfordshire. He was named for Levi Stubbs of The Four Tops, arguably Tamla Motown's most identifiable voice. Remember ‘[Reach Out I'll Be There'. So it would follow the parents who named their little white boy after a black R&B baritone also owned a 1964 split screen camper. 'I was five and it was quite cool.”
A neighbour had a Beetle and Levi always thought it was an ugly car. When he got his licence she let him drive it. He was hooked, but still agrees they're ugly. 'Well they got uglier later on.”
'And in 1990 I bought my own – £3000 for a 1970 Kombi, a prop off ‘The EastEnders' television programme, which had been written out of the storyline.” He went surfing up and down the coast of France six times and also to the local Run to the Sun – a showcase of custom cars and VWs at Newquay in Cornwall. The veneration of Veedubs is a global phenomenon.
Then in 2002 he met Olive online. There was a photograph, she was a mature 31 and in ‘good nick'. And he had $5000. It was an instant match. The new New Zealander knew he and Olive were destined to be together. And they discovered the country together.
'If Olive took us somewhere cool that was great. And if she didn't, we turned round and went down another road.”
We keep coming back to this association between man and a machine – why can a man love a VW but just own a Toyota or a Nissan? And he can't explain. 'You have to own one to understand.”
He's a kind of motoring monogamist – a one-man one-car guy. Would he ever sell Olive? 'God no! I will be buried with her.” Either that or Olive will go live with his son.
Levi was up north at Sandy Bay one day when he spotted a German tourist taking photos of Olive. Why would a German come 18,353km to take photos of a German car to take back to Germany? 'His English was poor and my German was worse.” But it seems ‘der tourist' was very well-known Veedub engine builder back home.
They are now email, Facebook and even Christmas card buddies. Volkswagens transcend everything.
'Hitler's revenge they call them,” says Levi. In fact the Fuhrer, in a nod to the masses, wanted a small affordable, dependable car family car that could do 100km/hr. Porsche designed the Beetle. Levi, forever the Englishman, points out it may have been Hitler's idea, but it was an idea rescued by the British.
English bombers strafed the Wolfsberg factory producing VWs during the war because they believed there was military hardware being produced there. After the war it was a British army officer, Major Ivan Hirst, who got the Volkswagen factory running again. So if you drive a VW you owe it to Ivan and not Adolf.
As the New York Times said: Hirst ‘shifted the failed dream of producing a people's car for the Third Reich into an economic powerhouse that built the Beetle, the symbol of German recovery. The world was overrun by the man's idea, if not the man himself'.
And all this from a delightful chance encounter with Oliver. Bless her. And this from someone who scoffed at all the anthropomorphism. I have never been in a Kombi. I must organize an outing with Olive.
The Bay of Plenty Volkswagen Club's Run to the Sun event meets on Friday, March 10, at Mount Maunganui's Phoenix Carpark.
Want to be part of the VW family weekend? Search ‘Run to the Sun NZ 10-12 March 2017' on Facebook.