Most famous as the dynamic host of CTV’s FashionTelevision — a post she’s held for the past 24 years — Jeanne Beker has had an ongoing love affair for nearly 30 years with something else few of her fashionable followers would guess: A little Bug.

It all started in 1981, just as Beker’s broadcasting career was taking off and she bought herself a 1979 white VW Beetle “Bug” convertible.

“I was in the thick of my gig at The NewMusic, and I thought it was the perfect little hip car to ride around in,” she explains, listing off some of actors, musicians and artists who graced the car’s passenger seat in those days.

But in 1986, when Beker and her husband were expecting their first child, they decided a more practical family car was needed, and sold her beloved Beetle. “It was quite sad for me,” she recalls. “As the years went by, I really regretted having sold that car. They’re so hard to come by.”

Then, in 2004, fate intervened. Beker was entertaining some people at home and one of the guests said, “You used to own this really great convertible Beetle, didn’t you,” explains the divorced mother-of-two. It turned out that his niece in northern Ontario owned the very car she longed to get back.

“She had bought it from the guy who had bought it from the girl that I had originally sold it to nearly 20 years earlier,” says Beker.

Incredibly, the now-vintage convertible turned out to be in better shape than when Beker had first sold it for $11,000, so she bought it back for the exact same amount.

Today, the fashion doyenne, who’s also a judge on Canada’s Next Top Model, rides around Toronto on summer days in the stick-shift Beetle, listening to old tunes from Motown and Gershwin. “You really feel the road when you’re driving it,” she says. “It’s got one of those little steering wheels that’s like a racing wheel.”

It also brings a smile to the faces of passersby. “People really love that car. They think of Herbie, the love bug,” she quips. “I guess it’s that old saying that ‘if you really love something, let it go, and in a few years it’ll come back.’”

• Watch out for this column in Metro Drive in which Heather Buchan takes a look at celebrities and their world of wheels.

– Heather Buchan is a Toronto-based journalist who has worked at various magazines,
including Hello! Canada, where she cut her teeth in the world of celebrities.