Vast vintage Volkswagen collection near Cornwall is about to double
After being bitten by the Volkswagen bug at a young age, Joe Leroux has amassed what is probably the biggest collection of rare, vintage Volkswagens in Ontario.
Though he has a weakness for all cars produced by the German manufacturer, he is a fussy collector: Leroux owns several dozen ultra-rare, pre-1970, air-cooled Volkswagen cars, buses and trucks.
The care and feeding of the vintage Volkswagens that fill his rambling, rural barn in the Cornwall, Ont., area is nearly a full-time job. He's got to keep tires inflated, fresh fuel in the gas tanks, batteries charged and the paperwork on each of his cars up to date.
"You do it for the love of it," he says.
Leroux doesn't sell one of his cars unless the sale will finance the purchase of an even rarer car or restoration project.
He estimates he'll spend 100 hours just replacing rusty body metal on a very rare 1965 double-cab Volkswagen truck that once did service for the provincial government in British Columbia.
Each one has character
Each car has character, he says, like the well-preserved 1960s VW panel van that served as an ambulance in France, or a windowless commercial van still bearing the hand-painted commercial script of Bill Locke, the Oregon carpenter who used it to deliver supplies to job sites.
In heated storage he keeps a 1951 oval-window Beetle, the second-oldest Deluxe Beetle in Canada. That rare, white car sits in front of another white Beetle with keyless entry that was manufactured in 2001 for the Mexican market and imported to Canada.
As well as a barn full of unique Volkswagen cars, trucks and buses dating back to 1946, he maintains a massive stock of vintage new and used parts, all neatly organized on shelves.
Leroux keeps separate buckets of oil caps, dipsticks, boxes of gauges, seatbelts, knobs and buttons, and an entire area dedicated to the storage of pristine hoods and doors for cars dating back to the '40s.
While Leroux does sell hard-to-find parts to other collectors, and does specialized machining work on the unique engines, wrenching and restoring Volkswagens is mainly a hobby.
It all began with a road trip
The story of how Leroux was bitten by the Volkswagen bug starts with a road trip.
When he was just 15 years old, he decided to go a long for the ride with his girlfriend and her parents. Their destination was the small town of Gouverneur in upstate New York, where a man was selling a vintage Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.
The seller was Stanley Orford, a successful American businessman who had himself begun collecting Volkswagens in the 1960s when the cars were plentiful and not particularly collectible.
"He opened up this barn — this two-level barn full of cars. Cars upstairs, cars downstairs, all Volkswagens," recalled Leroux. "It was unbelievable."
The teenager instantly developed a case of Beetle-mania for one of Orford's vintage Volkswagen Beetles. Leroux returned home and begged his parents to let him buy the weathered old car he had seen in New York.
"They said, 'No, no, you don't need that. You'll never get done. You're wasting your money,'" laughed Leroux.
After two weeks of constant pleading, the boy's parents finally relented. Leroux returned to the old barn in Gouverneur and bought the vintage Beetle, along with a spare engine.
"I bought my first car before I had my licence. I restored the whole car and enjoyed every minute of it. By the time I got my licence I was able to drive it. Since then, I've been hooked," he said.
Leroux grew up and became a certified Volkswagen auto mechanic, working several years at a dealership until eventually returning to the family-owned vending business.
Return to New York
Now, his path has come full circle.
Stanley Orford, now 87 years old, is getting out of the Volkswagen hobby, and this fall Leroux purchased the barn full of rare, early Volkswagen parts and many of the vintage cars collected by the businessman who introduced him to the cars.
Leroux is eager to prevent Orford's collection from being scattered.
"Everything's going to the U.S. south, or to France," said Leroux. "They're buying our rusty, Canadian cars just because in the last five years, the market has changed tremendously on the value of the Volkswagens."
The acquisition means Leroux must sell about 100 of his less rare VW engines to make space for the New York collection before it arrives in the spring.
"I've probably owned over 75, maybe close to 100 throughout my years. Unfortunately I can't keep them all, I'm just trying to keep the rare ones."
