Bummer. We still have our '90 Vanagon Multivan, a waterboxer, and it hauls plenty around in it, including grandkids. The sound is distinctive enough that the small units, who call it “The Bus”, get excited when they hear us coming. Sic Transit Gloria…Westfalia
I bet they’ll still be on the road long after Volkswagen itself goes out of business.
Dammit. I wanted an electric one if they ever got around to it. The Bulli seems properly half-arsed, even the previous concept was better.
i love my '87 GL Westy.
Just because.
Not the first or the last person to toss their salad in a van.
Wow, that’s way back from series 2 of Top Gear when the first Stig wore black and wasn’t dead yet.
Oh man, the Bread Loaf is going the way of the Dodo!
Ooh zing! You nasty, baby.
Otherwise known as Series 47.
If you want old Clarkson…
I own a 73 and an 88. When production ends it will definitely make it harder to keep the 73 on the road.
But please don’t call either one a “cab-over”. That’s a body style used on large trucks where the body flips forward to access the engine. Since the engine in both the type2 and Vanagon are in the back, the cab does not move.
Call it cab forward, sure. Or even “forward control”. But not cab-over. Thanks.
Well, I wasn’t aware that they were still in production anywhere, but I’ll be sorry to see it end. I learned how to drive in a 1970 Microbus. It was my parent’s second microbus and their third VW. Going from driving a microbus to a '66 MG Midget (I inherited) at age 16 made me feel like the coolest cat in school.
If it weren’t for the VW Microbus, it might have been years before I learned the words my dad yelled as he struggled to drive our family over the “Grapevine” section of the I-5.
I have always been amazed at how much people love these things. I used to have friends who kept 3 or more (in hopes of keeping one on the road with parts). They learned a lot about mechanical repairs.
Those who love them, love them. Me, I like a vehicle that doesn’t require me to keep a full toolbox handy whenever I go anywhere.
I was just surprised because the 2008 model that drove me around in Helsinki last month sounded exactly the same as my dad’s 1965 model from when I was a teen. Sorry to see them go
I think I can safely say that no one wants that. How the hell was his hair worse back then?
The first couple series of new format Top Gear was better than those clips, but not by much. I’d say it really got going when they tested how indestructible the Toyota Hilux is in series 3. Then the Aston Martin DB9 vs Eurostar train race and the £100 car challenge in series 4 were the first of what I (and I assume a lot of other people) watch Top Gear for.
To keep this kind of on topic, here’s Richard Hammond with a converted VW Bus (I think. It’s something by Volkswagen anyway).
There’s a garage near me - never seems to be open (or at least very busy), yet there are half a dozen Microbuses surrounding the property in various states of repair. This news almost inspires to go track down the story of what’s going on there.
my mom had one, too. we loved that bus. it was a frankenstein, the engine had been replaced with one out of a wrecked porsche by the used-car lot she bought it from. I would have loved to have inherited it, but the damn electrical caught fire in a parking lot and burned it up. she said there was a chunk of it melted into the pavement. good thing she wasn’t driving it at the time, but still, quelle rip-off.
cool name, btw.
If the engine were air-cooled, I could see being nostalgic for this; I always wanted to have an air-cooled Beetle so that I could make use of this classic DIY manual.
