This might be the deal breaker, I mentioned the leaping out of fourth gear that the beetle does to the guy who is servicing it. "Oh yeah, my van has started doing that, it probably wants rebuilding or replacing". This sounds like an epically expensive task, so might not be a goer. I can drive it without fourth gear though, so will see how it's doing when it comes back from the service and general fix up.
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in A small town, Kent. Wed to Clare + dad to two, I am a full-stack web engineer, and I do js / nodejs, some ruby, python, php ect ect. I like pubs, parkrun, eating, home automation + other diy jiggery-pokery, history, tree stuff, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.