Oldbury car restorer offering chance to win custom car and help children have a happy Christmas

VolksMagic in Oldbury is running the annual raffle to give entrants the chance to win a custom-built Volkswagen Beetle Baja.

The raffle, which is being drawn on Tuesday, has been run by the workshop for nine years, with tickets costing £5 per person, and has raised an average of £10,000 per year for charity.

Owner Lee Southerton said the garage would build a new car every year for the raffle as a way of supporting the Free Radio Cash for Kids appeal, as well as the charity set by himself and his wife Katrina, Santa's a Gangster.

He said the work to create the car each year was hard, but worth it for the impact it makes and the support it gets.

He said: "We get stuck in and, to be honest, without the support network around us, it wouldn't be possible as we've got traders and a huge automotive family around us.

"We do Volkswagen Beetles and other cool cars that people are into, so it's not just a job, it's a passion, and we're looking to raise £10,000 and, at the moment, we're not looking too shabby."

Mr Southerton said the aim was to raise as much money as possible, then translate that into toys and gifts, and said that the level of support the raffle got was beyond anything he could have predicted.

He said: "We don't donate any money, but instead use it to buy toys and gifts, and we also receive donations each year as well.

"If you imagine that you've got £10,000 and you go out and spend it on gifts, some of those gifts cost £5 or £10, so it doesn't go as far as you'd like, so the hundreds of toy donations just make so much of a difference.

"For anyone who might want to enter, but hasn't yet, my strapline to everyone is that someone's got to win the car for £5, but if you don't, rest assured, at Christmas, you've bought a child a toy."

To find out more about the raffle and about Santa's a Gangster, go to the website.