Border Patrol

Gav’s car isn’t preserved in the way most early Beetles are.
It’s kept moving.

Built in 1949, the car has passed through different lives and different uses, carrying the marks of each one. The paint tells its own story. So do the repairs. Nothing has been hidden or corrected beyond what’s needed to keep it running.

In Australia, cars like this are usually restored, parked, or removed from daily use altogether. This one wasn’t. It’s driven regularly, not to make a point, but because that’s how it’s always been treated.

The car has become known as the “Border Patrol” Beetle — a nickname earned through its past rather than a name applied later. It suits the car’s utilitarian presence. There’s nothing ornamental about it. Everything on it exists for a reason.

What’s most noticeable isn’t how old the car is, but how normal it feels in motion. It doesn’t ask for attention. It doesn’t perform nostalgia. It just works, as it has for decades, adjusted and repaired as needed along the way.

This film documents the car as it is now — still in use, still moving, still part of someone’s daily life.

No restoration.
No retirement.
Still driving.