This video brought me a lot of joy. It’s easy to assume that all T1 (first generation) VW buses (and pickups) are all perfectly restored and come out on nice sunny Sundays for a little ride or a car show. Here’s 36 battered old T1s (not Type 1, Nate) off for four days in the wilds of northern California near Mt. Shasta. They encounter snow, mud and a very difficult river ford (at 42 17 minutes) that swallows up three out of four that attempt it. Engines need to be pulled, and other technical issues arise. But the convoy goes on, something this group does every year.
It makes me want one and join in. I have a real thing for these, since my very earliest days in Austria. The first car I ever drove with a stick shift was a ’65 bus. I consider it to be one of the most revolutionary and influential vehicles of the 20th century. No wonder they have such a passionate following.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1965 VW Deluxe Micro Bus “Samba” – A Truly Revolutionary Vehicle
When I was about 8 or 9 my family was given a first gen VW microbus to drive when a friend of theirs was out of the country for a year. I remember Mom and Dad griping out the lack of power – Dad used to say it would go 50 MPH downhill with a tailwind. But Mom loved it because we had two cars and she no longer had to drive Dad to work if she needed to use a car during the day. Us three kids loved it because we could spread out on the two rear benches and not have to sit wedged together side-by-side in the back seat of our 58 Plymouth. Every time I see one of these I smile with the happy memories it brings.
I watched it and NO WATER CROSSING .
This is a great heartwarming video to see, I have many fond memories of old ‘split screen’ Typ II’s dating back to Pop’s direct import 1954 Kombi in New England .
I agree, these were world shaking vehicles when new .
-Nate
The water crossing and subsequent recovery efforts are back at the ~17:30 mark. I don’t understand why they didn’t try pulling out the first stuck with the one that successfully made the crossing.
Probably no hitch on it. VW buses don’t have much structural strength back there unless one has a proper hitch.
For sure. The bus has some extra reinforcement under the center part of the body, but the back part is all sheet metal. No strength at all. When the sheet metal gets rusty, the bumper falls off. (Happened on my ’59)
My bad; I wrote the wrong time. It starts at 17:20 minutes.
Along with the beetle, for me it is the most impressive and spectacular vehicle of the last century.
That they are still in force is proof of this.
Awesome to see these getting used. When I was very small I remember some hunters and outdoorsmen using these as off road vehicles as the good clearance and traction made them pretty capable for the day. Baja bug style beetles with mud tires were often deployed off road from my house.
In the early 1960’s, my unconventional uncle used his VW van for deliveries in his dry-cleaning business.
His regular car was a ’57 Chrysler, but he’d occasionally drive the van, on visits to our house.
There was a always the discussion of how a many windows it had:
This was the criterion that determined whether it was a commercial vehicle or passenger car.
The parkway leading to our house allowed passenger cars only.
I suppose there were enough windows (21 or 23) to qualify as a passenger car.
Due to the “chicken tax”, every VW van officially imported new to the USA after about 1957 was a passenger version. There were back seats and various numbers of side windows. Kombi was the model name of the “stripper” model a business could buy and remove the seats in order to have a cargo van. Here in California, if it has a back seat it is a station wagon, without, a commercial vehicle.
The chicken tax became effective in January 1964. That’s when VW stopped selling “trucks”, the van without seats and the pickup. Then it was just the Kombi and Samba.
My childhood pediatrician had a Beetle, and her husband replaced his 2wd domestic pickup with a T2 van at some point to use for backcountry hunting and fishing. Both the Beetle and the T2 were the same beige color. Hid the dirt, no doubt.
I found a webpage that goes into more detail of The Shasta Snow Trip (SST). It’s an interesting 300-500 mile winter trip (typically held the first week of February) from Mendocino to Mt. Shasta City that was started in 2000 by an ex-Marine who subsequently invited others with pre-1967 VW buses. It was a wise move, considering the rough nature of some of the back roads and not for the faint of heart (if the videos are any indication).
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=90987
One of the reasons that the Ferrari 250 GTO has been so expensive for so long is that there are 36 of them. Ownership makes you a member of an exclusive club, and they have a number of events where they go to classic racing circuits in Europe and on road drives, or at least they did in decades past. It’s pretty easy to point to Ferrari sports racers with more impressive specifications from the same era, and individual models of those cars with significant racing history. The GTO was always prized because the right number of them existed. You could buy a 250 TR, but that wouldn’t get you invited to a party with 35 other insanely rich guys who could congratulate one another on their good taste. I wonder if original condition T1s enjoy a similar price premium?
I just drove to work in my 53 year old air cooled VeeDub which started straight up after sitting outside for the 3 1/2 months I was away in China. Such dependability is endearing when it’s your daily driver!
Gotta love seeing these of vehicles used as intended and not just sitting in a museum – what a great video!