Brazil had yesterday the deadliest day ever, they burry now people day and night as grave diggers cannot keep up the work. France has an evening clock from 7.00pm nationwide. Hospitals in parts of Italy are pure horror. Covid is not gone, and is worse as ever…. Before summertime we can’t count on too many things…. and  we can only win from this virus if we fight together. International travels stay a far cry….

We don’t blame anybody and assume everybody does the best he can, to follow and cure the measures taken by our governments.

BBT is no different, it’s funny how we walk around whole day long with our face masks…. Why Bob and Peter didn’t make BBT face masks yet is our biggest question…

All that, just to say it was Covid who started the problems in our supply chains  with several reasons for that. One more as a result from the other. What brought us in a supply chain tsunami… and the bad news is, this horror story is absolutely not over yet. More of it they didn’t find a vaccine for this logistic horror story yet, on the contrary.

Let’s try to explain in simple words.

At the outbreak of the pandemic all economics predicted a big crimp in economy. Because of that ocean shipping lines start to plan reducing the numbers of vessels, routes, capacity etc…. the unexpected happened and the consumer start spending more, all day home for many, no opportunity to please yourself with services (restaurants, travel, wellness etc.) mainstream consumer start pleasing themselves with buying consumer goods, (garden) furniture, bicycles, houseware, you name it ,we tried to please ourselves. This made demand for production rise (a lot) especially in the cheap “making” countries like China, Brazil, India etc. What made the demand for raw materials move up and not by a bit. BUT…. as less vessels sail, and a lot of factories close down, partially or not for the pandemic, this was the scenario for the perfect (economic) storm… and today we’re still in the middle of it. Simply said.

As said before, container prices moved up by 200% we pay 3 times more today for containers from Taiwan, China and India than we used to do a year ago. That will reflect in prices, not only at BBT, but everywhere you buy consumer goods.

This and the fact governments printing money at fastest pace in modern economic times tell us the next perfect storm is just around the corner….. Inflation….

Do we have to worry? Not really, as long as government presses can print money fast enough inflation stays under control…(LOL)  … or to be serious, normally heavy inflation is only really bad for people who have real money. In the bank or in the sock under your bed it doesn’t matter. Money reduces in value a lot…. But mainly “things” keep up well… houses, land, and….collector items…. not on the short run, but as soon as the inflation is over, these “things” (let’s call them assets) mainly do good… That’s how far our economic logic and knowledge go…. let us consider collector cars be as part of these “assets” for now…:)

Also BBT has been hit hard by the perfect storm of the economy. Some foundries didn’t supply since September… lack of raw material, lack of work force or because of governmental measures… a big mess, we hope to receive in April a lot of goods, as we have many on the water… if not too many ships blocking the Panama or the Suez Canal we might be able to start catching up and get our infill back up from its historical lows…. we work day and night to convince manufacturers, suppliers and shippers to give us priority.

This week we have a couple of very cool new items to help fight that inflation….. Sit back, relax, buckle up and enjoy the ride, welcome at the BBT News….

In our Silver Weld Through line we received this week the early cargo boot floor, the metal part above your engine in your splitty bus that is…
We used to have the late model cargo boot floor longer time already under BBT # 0890-934 and now we bring you the early model.

Another family of sheet metal we have complete now…

0890-933 Cargofloor rear – Bus 03/55-07/63 SWT

We also received a very large order from Vintage Speed, with more on the water.

As we agreed to help Vintage Speed with the distribution of their products on European soils we will stock remarkable higher numbers and a larger diversity of their products, because they only produce on order and don’t carry any stocks @ their factory we will stock for them, right here, starting now…:)

Any Vintage Speed need, just let us know and we will order, stock or make it available for you….
Let’s start with three cool bus shifters out of the Vintage Speed “Classic Quick Shifter” line…

More accurate shifting, more precise handling, Classic Quick shifter is not a monstrous custom shifter, but just a nice touch of caring and a good taste.
Three models to choose from covering all years of T1 and T2 buses from 1950 all the way up to 1979.

Pick your stick….

0511-565 Classic quick shifter Bus -08/59 (Black) – Vintage Speed

0511-555 Classic quick shifter Bus 60-67 (Black)- Vintage Speed

0511-545 Classic quick shifter – Bus 68-79 (Black) – Vintage Speed

Another Vintage speed add , due to popular demand is this throttle linkage with ball bearing for your Type 1 engine if carrying a Porsche style cooling system.
This is the best and most accurate linkage system to operate your dual carburator system.

This is the sophistaced version of our own BBT very simple throttle linkage BBT # 2187

Our whole family of Throttle linkage for your carburation system for Type 1 and Type 4 engines  can be found HERE

2187-550 Throttle linkage with ball bearing for Type 1 engine with Porsche cooling – Vintage Speed

We teamed up with Febi Germany for this very practical and high quality CV boot kit yet very economical priced.
Because of the quantity we produced we can offer this kit at an extreme low price.

This was a natural addition to our CV boot kit program.
We choose to sell them each, sometimes you only need to replace one. So you need 2 pcs for one axle or 4 pcs for a complete car.

This CV boot comes complete with its clamp, 6 new torque bolts, mounting clips, mounting grease and even a new nut in case you want to use this kit  on a water cooled car (yes they also fit certain popular water-cooled models)

For us, air-cooled VW nuts, they  fit all small diameter CV joints from IRS type of rear suspension.
Large diameter CV boot kits like for 181 (Thing) Bay window bus, you can find under our BBT # 1479 also at very sharp prices.

You can score a HIT with the Febi/BBT CV boot KIT.…

1474-100 CV boot kit rear – Beetle/KG, Type3, Type411 -07/69 German(1)

We managed to get some longer missing items back on our shelves….

0013-956 Bumper rear – Bus 05/79-08/92 (chrome – w/o bumper strip) SWT

And for the split window beetle lovers….

Find all of our brake cylinders HERE

1224-12 4 hole brakecylinder 19mm (Ate)

It’s always nice to send the push button on the NEWS after editing… knowing it goes around worldwide through the VW community. To try to make the VW world a better place, at least better as we found it. That’s the BBT spirit and we don’t give up…. Covid, inflation or perfect storms, you’re aboard with a supplier that handles it all…. at your fully service!

Will be continued, stayed tuned.

Happy Easter to everybody!

Let’s get a sneak peak of what you will see as BBT publicity in the magazines we advertise….:)

Our friends over at Hayburner are carved out of the same wood as we’re here at BBT.. Entrepreneurial, Volkswagen juice in their veins, determined, creative and a big heart.

They too work hard and don’t stick their head in the sand for whatever storm comes at them.. 37 editions and they still stand tall, facing every challenge thrown at them with a smile and an ever bigger growing crowd of followers..

I’m sure you do but in case you haven’t heard of them, check them out at Hayburner.co.uk and if you like what you see the hit them up with a subscription which is free – you only pay the price of postage.

A no brainer if you ask us!