About us

Variety. That’s what draws me to VW Airhouse. I focus primarily on the engine and its performance. And it’s the diverse needs of the owners that make it so enjoyable. Some want reliability, others want speed. Whether it’s a new engine management system, fuel injection, or a custom-made exhaust, I’m always looking for a solution.
It’s fun to combine these wishes with the right technical setup.

After completing my technical education, I bought my first Beetle and quickly started experimenting: I installed a turbo and encountered other unusual situations. That’s how I met Ingmar and Sander. I gained my experience as a lead engineer at an OEM-supplier of turbo parts.
When I was given the opportunity a while ago to turn my hobby into my job at VW Airhouse for a few days a week, I didn’t have to think twice.

It’s fun to work on classic cars. And air-cooled has a special place in my heart. My first encounter with the special sound of a Beetle -I was a child then- apparently triggered a lot. I had just gotten my driver’s license when I bought my first Beetle and have always had one. What is so beautiful is that the car is so simple; the engine but also the technology around it. And it gives a lot of driving pleasure!

I mainly focus on maintenance and repair because even though it is simple, you have to take good care of it. It does happen that a car comes in that has been tinkered with by myself that I think; had you read up properly or asked for advice that would have been a lot safer.

At VW Airhouse, work is good. A fine team with the same passion and interest.

Doing exclusive spray work, that’s what I enjoy doing the most. That something is beautiful in the paint that people look up at for a moment. At dwelling. I have worked for over 17 years including at auto body repair shops, but this is different. Here it’s not “one roll from the baker, and the next,” but you have more credit for your work. Greater appreciation. You also see your work all over the place when owners post about their car on social media.

Painting a classic car is basically no different from painting a “regular” car. However, you do need to carefully determine in advance how to build up the various layers for a beautiful and durable result.

What also makes it so nice to work at VW Airhouse is that we work together in a motivated way on a project where the bodywork, engine and other technology is tackled and soon there will be something that we have all had our part in.

What fascinates me about the work I do is that I try to get the best out of cars by tuning the engine perfectly. That tuning is in half of the cases an engine with conventional carburetor and the other half I am working on the freely programmable Electronic Control Unit (ECU) that is also increasingly being built into classic cars where fuel injection is used. My work is a nice mix of modern cars and classics. That makes it fun every time!

A few days a week I work for VW Airhouse and the other days I spend working on my own company, which is in the same building, and then I am intensely busy with the dyno bench. My background as a mechanical and electrical engineer comes back together in the projects we do. Sander mechanically builds the VW and Porsche engines and completes them. And many ‘fresh’ engines, after being re-installed, end up on my dyno bench to be completely finished for many kilometers of driving pleasure.

Creating something beautiful gives me great satisfaction. And I’ve been doing it since I left primary school. My father owned a car dealership in Limburg, and naturally, I was often found in the garage. While my brother focused on spray painting, I developed my skills primarily in sheet metal work. The beautiful curves of the cars of the time were a real challenge: beating, bending, and shaping them until they fit perfectly and were perfectly smooth. After working in Germany for a while, I’m now back in the Netherlands, and at VW Airhouse, I can fully enjoy working on the classic cars we work on here.

From damage repair and local renovations to a complete body-off, everything is handled here and only leaves the factory when we’re all satisfied. I’m incredibly passionate about this work. The only thing I’m particularly careful about is using filler: the less, the better, is my motto. And Simon, the painter on the VW Airhouse Team, certainly appreciates that.

I’ve always been interested in tinkering with old cars. The technology is much more fun than all those new cars. I have a few old cars as a hobby myself. I was in pre-university education (VWO), but I wanted to make working on classic cars my job. I started looking for garages specializing in old cars and that’s how I found VW Airhouse. They do beautiful work here, and that really appealed to me. I switched to the vocational training program for automotive technical specialists, and I’m very pleased with it.

What makes this work so special is that I’ve been able to turn my passion into my profession and unleash my creativity building engines, modifying, and repairing classic cars. No two cars are the same, and customer needs are also very different, which makes it even more enjoyable.

I like to make things better, nicer. Something that I like in particularly with painting, because I’m passionate about cars and cars come true the painting.
This is my first experience on classic cars in my life. I used to work in a garage over years, mainly the repair shop. But it became just same same every day and I got bored. I left the “car world” and did some other jobs. This period was not really satisfying and not too long ago a friend of mine, Livingstone who is a painter-artist which does also work for VW Airhouse, re-discovered my passion for cars and he tipped me to have a chat with Ingmar. So I did and I am glad I can live my passion now.

Every car, every project with VW Airhouse is different. You have to align what the customer expects and it is a challenge to create a beautiful end-result in exactly the right colour, even if the car is 50 years or older. And it is exciting to see that I am surrounded by people who shared the similar passion.