When Helen met Fender

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Working in a humble but well-equipped oversized garage in southern Alberta, Annie Van Orman has completed the restoration of her 1969 Volkswagen Beetle. Regular readers of this column might recall two years ago reading about Van Orman’s Beetle, a car she affectionately nicknamed Helen. Back then, Van Orman was taking close to 30,000 Instagram followers along for the ride and was still working on some of the car’s sheet metal. She wasn’t quite done with her MIG welder.

Over the fall and winter of 2023 and into 2024, Van Orman completed all the bodywork, including filling, sanding, priming and painting the body, doors, fenders, hood and decklid. “Then, it was reassembly,” Van Orman says, which sounds a lot like oversimplification. But Van Orman is dedicated and hard-working and pieced the car together with only occasional help to perform tasks such as installing the front and rear windows.

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Given that state of activity, just a bit more than a year after that first column ran, Van Orman was driving Helen in early October 2024. By then she had gained more than 100,000 Instagram followers and that’s a number that continues to climb. Now that the Volkswagen is on the road, Van Orman drives it as often as possible. She lives about an hour outside of Lethbridge and will drive Helen into the city if running an errand. And this spring, Van Orman drove her 15-year-old daughter in Helen to almost every softball practice and game. That kind of use has added more than 4,000 trouble-free miles to the odometer.

“There are two emotions,” she says of completing the hard work disassembling a car, fixing all that ailed it, and reassembling it. “It’s a lot of excitement with the car finally on the road, and all that work is behind you, and you get to enjoy it,” she explains, and continues, “But that part of my life I have dedicated so much of my time to was done – (being finished) left me feeling sort of empty. I mean, absolutely excited to drive Helen, but also a weird sense of emptiness with nothing to do.”

While restoring Helen, Van Orman bought a 1968 Beetle for parts. She dubbed this car Fender because he donated his fenders to Helen. Overall, Fender was in much better condition than Helen. “Helen’s fenders were interesting,” she says. “The rears were fibre glass with a bit of a flare, and the front fenders were mismatched and didn’t fit quite right. I knew Fender was in relatively good shape, though, and thought he’d be good for a few parts. Plus, he’d probably be considered for a future project.”

That sense of emptiness Van Orman described filled earlier this year as she spent time collecting parts to completely build a new, dual-carburetor 1,904cc engine from the crankcase up. She’s run the engine on her test stand and intends to swap out Helen’s 1,600cc single carburetor powerplant for the larger mill. Then, she’ll run the 1,600cc engine in Fender. Work has begun in earnest on that car, with it rolling into her garage earlier this week and the body coming off the pan.

“The scope of Fender has changed,” Van Orman admits. “At first, I thought I’d build him as a large-tire Baja Bug, but I think it’ll be better if he’s a stepping stone to another project. I’d really like to do a Squareback or a Notchback VW. So, get him on the road with the well-sorted 1,600cc engine and then sell him to fund another car.”

She says Fender’s pan is in remarkably good shape, although she will need to cut out some rot and add new metal where the battery sits under the rear seat. Then, she’ll completely restore the chassis, taking everything apart, inspecting, repairing and replacing parts after cleaning and painting them all. “From what I can tell, Fender is in way better shape than Helen was,” Van Orman says. “There is work to do, but I think restoring him will feel like a vacation.”

Van Orman is sure to further build her social media audience while building Fender, and that’s something she doesn’t take for granted. Because of her social media presence, she’s gained sponsors from the likes of restoration suppliers such as Eastwood. And she was invited to take part in The Great Race 2025 with an all-female crew driving a 1966 Ford Fairlane to honour the late Jessi Combs and women in the automotive industry. She says that was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

“It all started as a simple concept of me building a car and sharing the experience on social media (@annies_vw),” Van Orman says of her restoration efforts. “But it’s amazing how many doors this has opened for me, and I’m very grateful.”

Greg Williams is a member of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC). Have a column tip? Contact him at 403-287-1067 or gregwilliams@shaw.ca

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