Volkswagen Beetle and Honda CB750 Barn Find Diorama, Pale Green, weathered

Volkswagen built the Beetle from 1938 to 2003, 21,529,464 of them, each with an air-cooled flat-four in the tail driving the rear wheels, and on 17 February 1972 it passed the Ford Model T as the best-selling car of all time. The last one left the Puebla plant in Mexico on 30 July 2003. The motorcycle parked beside it comes from the other side of the world. Honda showed the CB750 at the Tokyo Show in November 1968 and put it on sale in 1969 with a transverse four-cylinder engine of 736 cc, a single overhead camshaft and a front disc brake, and the word superbike was coined to describe it.

In this diorama both have been left to the straw. The Beetle's pale green paint is freckled with rust, one door has been replaced by a panel in red-brown primer and one front wing is bare grey, and cobwebs hang from the bumpers, mirrors and windscreen. A spare wheel lies on the roof and an Esso parcel on the bonnet. Behind it a flat-four engine sits on a pallet beside its silencer and a torn tarpaulin, and the red Honda, dusty and spotted with rust, carries webs across its handlebars and wire wheels. A step ladder, a jerrycan, cardboard boxes, loose hubcaps and Veedol, Martini and Firestone signs complete the scene, laid on a stepped dark green plinth. It was made by hand in Germany by Dirk Patschkowski.