“It will break down some days. I don’t want to worry about that,” says Manuel Campa.
You’re looking at a 1953 Volkswagen Beetle, a mass-produced marvel that is now quite the rare car, and it’s used by Campa as a daily driver. “I want to pick up my wife with it, I want to drive in the weekends with it, and have fun and enjoy. It’s a car to have fun with,” he says.
“It might be silly for some people,” says Campa, “but it’s a dream come true for me and I’m super happy with the car.”
A dream come true? Campa is a painter by trade, who honors classic cars, motorcycles, and bicycles on canvas. “For me, my passions are my cars, my toys, my brushes, my canvas, my studio,” he says, “and that’s where I spend most of my days.”
“The thing that not many people see is that you have to work very hard in your studio to make this happen…your painting is going to hang in someone’s house,” Campa says. After a long, difficult process, he says of his creations: “Finally, sometimes it’s worth having your signature.”
