During the early 50's Finland was still paying WW-II compensations to Russia and importing just about anything was controlled by the government. Summer Olympics of 1952 were held in Helsinki and this created huge hype in whole country. Olympic Games were a milestone in modernization process of Finland, Coca Cola came available in shops etc.

Olympia Auto Oy was formed (by 27 year old enterpreneur) and got special license to import 10 brand new Kleinbusses because they loaned them to Olympic Commitee. The company received an additional Sonderbus (lyxbus for swedes, deluxe microbus for yanks..) as a bonus. These busses were used to transport the personnel and athletics around Helsinki. Today only the Sonderbus and two Kleinbusses are known to exist from this batch. The other Kleinbus is owned by Gute Fahrt webmaster Mikko Heikkilä and this one is owned by Kai Aulankoski.

After the Olympics Olympia Auto Oy organized huge road trips with these busses to eg. Egypt and India. And that was With 25hp engines! In the 60's the busses had became too old for the job and they were sold to private persons.

Photos from the early 90's before Kai got the Bus. (Photo credits: Kari Alhonen)

Photos from the trip to fetch the Bus home

Kai found this bus in '98 from Finnish countryside. Soon after the purchase bus was delivered to Vaasa and during the '98/'99 winter Just Bugs fixed the underside and lower body panels. Kai received the bus three weeks before we headed to WCA summer tour. Before the trip bus had to be re-assembled, slammed and inspected by the officials. Kai fitted the 1600cc engine he had used before in his other Split Screen busses.

Samu posing next to the Bus at the Limburg gas station.

The bus was used in WCA summer 99 Tour where we attended the Bug Run weekend in Sweden and Bad Camberg in Germany the next weekend. The week between the events we toured Belgium. Kai's Bus collected some 3800 kms to the clock during the 10 day trip. The current Sprint Star wheels were bought from Rene Lokdam in Bad Camberg.

During the winter of '99/'00 Kai fixed more body panels and doors. After that the bus was repainted.

Kai's son Roope testing the Barn..

Only accessories besides the safaris are the Petri steering wheel, Sprint Star wheels and rare 50's aluminium license plate frames.

The JP slot wheels were a change for 2001 season. Kai and his bus is usually seen in various events in Scandinavia and Europe. Here in VW Euro swap meet in 2001.

JPs were swapped in favour of American Racing Torque Thrust Ds in 2002.

Interior was updated for 2004 season with Barndoor Sonderbus dashboard.