- Culture
- 14 Aug 14
Rock DJ by day, motoring enthusiast afterhours, for Radio Nova's Marty Miller happiness is an open road and his 1972 VW Beetle Wizard.
One of Ireland’s leading rock DJs, Marty Miller hosts the popular breakfast show on Radio Nova. He’s interviewed some of the biggest names in music, including Lemmy, Slash, Alice Cooper, Duff McKagan, Roger Daltrey and Joe Elliott. Miller is married to fellow Nova presenter Dee Woods – for their wedding car they pressed into service the beauty described below!
“I’ve a 1972 VW Beetle Wizard, which I’ve owned for about nine years. It was a total re-build and has one of the very last Mexican-made engines – they stopped producing those a few years back. I shipped it in at a lot of expense but it means that it had a brand new engine with a 1972 body. It looks very much like an American muscle car – you’d look at it from the side and think ‘what is that?’ It’s almost Mustang-like. But then, from the front, it’s pure Beetle. It’s a really good runner, sounds beautiful, has a 1.6 engine and a lot of fun and personality. Every time you get into it you’re in for a different ride and when you bring it out in the good weather with the top down, it’s a serious head turner. It gets a lot more use than the average classic car; it’s more than just a weekend ride for me. Beetles just seem to capture the imagination, they link back to the summer of love, the hippie era and all of that. You could throw them into any climate and they would run. I’m a member of the Southern Volks Folks Club. We meet occasionally for rallies, festivals and spins about the place. I doubt there are five other Wizard models in Ireland – I’ve only come across one.