shot and posted by Fernando Eliminator
Seeing the front end of a VW bus gen2 (T2) grafted to the rest of the body of a T1 always makes me smile. Yes, this is what the VW factory in Brazil built for quite a few years, before they moved on to a genuine T2, presumably when Wolfsburg was done using the body dies when they switched to the all-new T3. It just goes to show that the T2 was really just a remodeled T1, as all the key body dimensions were the same, to make this an ready fit.
Ha! Really cool, a 14 window. Makes me smile, too.
Great pic! How about one of the later production models with the radiator mounted up front? Those always trip me out.
Please see comment below. It was the water cooled 1.4L.
I’ll pick one soon and post in the cohort
Hail the VW bus !
Thank you for the great pics.
There’s one with several pix of it in this post, in fact it’s even a camper…
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/international/summer-vacation-classic-an-icelandic-grab-bag/
How cool! Thanks for the link.
The more I learn about VW do Brasil, the more amazed and fascinated I become. Not only did they made do with the mothership’s hand-me-downs, but they also designed and implemented interesting vehicles out of whatever pieces they had hanging around.
The one that impresses me most is the early Gol with the Type I/Beetle powertrain spun 180 degrees to make a front engine/FWD car. Astounding!
Totally agree about the Gol. VW do Brasil certainly had some inventive engineers, and how great that they were allowed free rein to follow their vision without Wolfsburg interfering.
Back in 1953, VW developed a smaller car prototype (EA-48) that used one half of the Beetle engine (two cylinder boxer) in a FWD configuration. Using the VW drive train flipped around for FWD was not really a new or radical concept. And I can’t really say if the Gol was engineered by Brazil or Wolfsburg. If I had to guess, Wolfsburg was either primarily or at least quite substantially involved.
A German 2CV, Ive read about that somewhere.
Sources indicate that the T2 (officially Kombi, or by the nickname “perua”) was produced in Brazil from 1976 all the way to 2013. The air cooled boxer gave way to a water cooled in line four in 2006. Minor changes were introduced from time to time, mostly during the 2000s.
The 14 window was the standard configuration until 1997. Other common model was the “pickup”.
I should mention this is still a truly workhorse , daily used to haul stuff to the street fairs in the city of São Paulo. This is the kind of vehicle that puts real fresh food on our table around here.
I did a post here to commemorate the end of 53 years of T1/T2 production in Brazil:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/the-end-of-the-road-for-the-last-classic-vw-bus-brazilian-vw-kombi-production-wraps-up/
Great write-up, I must have missed it
A nice SAMBA ! .
-Nate
Interesting, I’ve not seen a T 1.5 before. Looking at it I think I see T1 suspension, guessing swing axles and all, not the trailing arm, nose in the sky of the T2s. The nose obviously is T2, missing the glorious door windows, what were they called, side curtains?
So, was it really a T1 with a T2 nose?
T1 side panels the rest is T2 including the running gear, there are some of them over here actually theres other oddball VWs about too and from the outside they look just like the regular item but see some in pieces and its a different story, South Africa forgot to update everything on late beetles and ran the small bolt pattern wheels on wide 5 hubs via adaptors, who knew?
Funnily enough I saw one of these a few days ago, in the UK, there have been a few imports here over the years but they remain pretty rare.. if not especially sought after
Always found VW do Brazils output particularly interesting, and kind of a shame that VW in Germany didn’t see fit to market some of the models elsewhere, the SP1/2 and the Brasilia may have done well in Europe at least