Paul Niedermeyer (CC founder) is the undisputed king of VW bus profiles, owing to his personal history with them. He has waxed historically and philosophically on various buses, but not much on the campers. There have also been many shorter articles on campers by others, often later Vanagons. Surprisingly, though, the T2 (Bay) Westfalia Campmobile has so far escaped a full-length profile on these pages.
It shall escape no more. I submit that I am the man to undertake this, not because I am an authority on VW’s or that I speak a lick of German, but because it’s my destiny. I have some deep-seated history with these most unique mobile homes that our other authors probably don’t have. More on that later.
Click through for some VW Microbus and Westfalia Campmobile background and a deep look inside an amazing late T2 Westy.
Driving by myself one day recently, I happened upon this nice example parked in front of a shopping center. No “for sale” sign or anything, just parked there by itself. Shortly after that, my wife unknowingly sent me an internet article about a certain VW camper van.
Pictured above is virtually the same van, with one small difference, and I’m not talking about the spare tire. This one has 994 miles and sold at a Paris auction in February for $110,000 (or 101,320 €). It had a good story of how the original owner took it on a single vacation then “not getting used to the manual gearbox, it [was] left unused until its sale in 2018”. There is probably a lot of understatement and subtext in that sentence. If you’ve ever driven one, you know what I mean. It’s not hard to imagine someone being so distraught about how it drives, particularly on the highway, as to park it and never drive it again. Well, most people would sell it, but maybe it’s a little surprising you don’t see more of these in time capsule condition for that reason.
Let’s start at the beginning. Paul has previously covered the early history of the VW vans (see links for his articles at the end), so I’ll just give a brief version. In the early postwar period, VW was making the Beetle (or Type 1) at their Wolfsburg factory. In the factory, they used improvised flatbed trucks (plattenwagen) on VW chassis for moving parts around the facility. This gave a visiting dealer named Ben Pon the idea of adapting the chassis to a box-shaped truck using standard VW mechanicals.
VW ran with this idea, developed prototypes and production of the Transporter (or Type 2) began in 1950. Looking at the picture, the tires look hardly wider than a bicycle’s, which was adequate because its speed was hardly faster than a bicycle. Alright, I’m exaggerating, but not by a lot considering we are talking about a vehicle that was designed to haul 8 or more passengers or large amounts of cargo with the 30hp (gross) engine it shared with the regular Beetle. It also shared the Beetle’s wheelbase and suspension, but the unibody frame was significantly beefed up for its hauling duties.
As one might expect from a German company, the Transporter was a very stout, well-designed vehicle. Road And Track tested a 1956 model, which had 36hp (gross) since 1951, and got a 0-60mph time of 75 seconds (I didn’t know 0-60 times went that high). The bus did have a sticker on the dash advising a top speed of 50mph, but if one was patient, they found it could make 70 with a tailwind. None-the-less, they liked it. Tom McCahill in Popular Mechanix said, “It is as versatile as a steamship con man and twice as useful. It will climb anything but not fast. When the grade gets real grim the speed is not much better than a fast walk but it will get there.”
The VW bus became a German, then a European, then a worldwide phenomenon. Nobody up to that time had sold a vehicle with such space efficiency and versatility. This, combined with the fact that it shared the standard Volkswagen’s engineering and quality, all at a very reasonable price, made it a hit. Hit is probably an understatement. Revolutionary is a better word, and more aptly applied here than to any vehicle since the Model T.
More revolutionary than the Beetle? I’ll let the readers decide. Sales of the bus were only between 3 and 6 percent of Volkswagen’s total production from 1951-1978, but its influence in its market segment was huge. In fact, it invented its own market segments. As the poster above illustrates, it has been used for anything a light duty truck could be imagined to do.
One of those imagined uses brings us to our main subject: the campers. It didn’t take long to conceive of using the bus for a camper. Westfalia Werke converted its first microbus into a camper in 1951, starting a relationship with VW that would last through 2003 with the last Westfalia VW’s.
Westfalia was Volkswagen’s official conversion firm, with their products listed in VW catalogs and sold at VW dealers. There were other companies that did aftermarket camper conversions, such as Dormobile, Devon, and Danbury. This article will just focus on the official Westfalia models, or Westy’s as their fans often call them.
I haven’t been able to find a definite date that Volkswagen began officially selling the Westfalias. They were definitely low volume the first few years. My Standard Catalog of Imported Cars first lists a camper available (presumably just in the U.S.) for 1956. If you have more specific information, please let me know.
First generation buses (1950-67) are known as T1’s (Transporter gen 1), also called Split Windows for the two-piece windshield. Westfalia made a number of different configurations for the campers, which they called Special Models or SO’s (sonderausfuhrungen). These models often came with optional tents designed to attach to the side of the van, greatly increasing the sheltered space.
The SO42 is a later T1 package. Quite nice, but the camping features are not nearly as sophisticated as they would become in later Westfalias.
1967 SO42
T1’s are easy to identify, not that you are likely to encounter one on the road. They all have the sweeping character lines on the front (I call it a widow’s peak), sliding windows on the front doors and horizontal louvers above the rear wheels for engine air. There is very little outward change over the 18 years it was produced, though there were a number of functional refinements. As an aside, thinking about the T1 it has occurred to me that it’s ironic that a vehicle that was so conservative in a mechanical and business sense became so closely associated with political liberalism.
1967 SO42
The pop-top is very small on these, and is clearly not designed for sleeping space.
1968 saw a complete makeover for the Transporter, now a T2. The most obvious change is the windshield, which is now a larger, curved one-piece, making this generation affectionately known a Bay Window. Fans also sometimes call them Breadloafs. Other major changes included more front overhang allowing larger doors for ease of entry/egress as well as a bit of “crush space” for just a smidgen of accident safety, roll down front windows, sliding side door (an industry first), redesigned suspension including a rear without swing axles or reduction gears, and a larger 1600cc engine (65hp gross, tests listed 0-60 mph times down to about 37sec!).
The early T2 camper layout is similar to the later T1’s, with a few additional features available like a sink with electric pump and electric fridge. The biggest difference was a much larger, front-hinged pop-top with a built-in cot for sleeping one.
A tent was still available.
I looked at a lot of Westy photos in preparing this article and this is the only one like this that I saw. “Professional looking photo of pretty lady in front of VW camper” is definitely not an established genre.
Compared to the T1, there were quite a few visible year to year changes in the T2 VW bus and the Westfalias. I’ll list some of the easy-to-spot ones.
1971- wider wheels with small round vent holes and flatter style hubcaps (style used through 1991!)
1972- new tall taillights and revised air intake scoops (squared instead of crescent-shaped)
1973- front turn signals moved above headlights next to air vent. Bumpers squared off, no longer wrap-around in front.
1974- pop top switched from front hinged to rear hinged. The new pop top included full-width mattress big enough for two adults. Forward driver-side rear-facing seat replaced with cabinet allowing for optional propane stove. First year for front seat headrests (In U.S. at least. I haven’t been able to definitively document this).
1976- interior configuration changed again to have all cabinets on driver side with large open floor on passenger side, rear closet switched from passenger side to driver side. This is the general configuration they would stick with through 2003.
There were quite a few mechanical changes, as well. Some of the major ones:
1971- front disc brakes
1972- new 1700cc (1679 actually) engine shared with VW/Porsche 914, good for 63hp (net). Sometimes referred to as “Porsche powered” vans, though really the 914 was VW powered.
1973- automatic transmission available
1974- engine increased to 1800cc (1795 actually)
1975- carbs replaced with Bosch electronic fuel injection
1976- engine displacement increased again to 2000cc (1970 actually), 67hp @4200rpm (net). Road tests had these with 0-60 times of 20 sec or just under. Blinding speed for a VW bus.
That brings us up to our subject van. Honestly, I haven’t been able to determine the year exactly. I can’t get it to come up on any of the license plate look-up sites and I haven’t been able to find any clues visible in the pictures that would specify the year. 76-79 is the best I can say. Let me know if you can nail it down better.
Let’s take a look inside the Campmobile, as the insides is what this vehicle is all about. I couldn’t get access inside our subject van and as you can imagine, through-the-screen-window pictures don’t work at all! So internet photos will be a stand in for our subject bus, but I will mostly use pictures from the 994 mile auction doppelganger where noted in the captions.
This view gives an idea of the van’s ample cabinetry. 120V plug with circuit breaker is below bench. Camper comes with a cord for hooking up to city power.
994 mile 1978 Westfalia
The main cabinet houses the sink and stove under a flip up lid that doubles as the backsplash. Inside the cabinet is the 7 gallon (26L) water tank for use with the electric pump. You can also hook the van up to city water and use the faucet under that pressure. Freestanding upholstered storage box secures between the front seats and can be moved around for seating, footrest, etc. Spare tire is behind the cover on the right side with the Westfalia sticker on it. Table is removable and it stores in the way-back behind the bench seat.
994 mile 1978 Westfalia
Propane tank fuels the stove.
994 mile 1978 Westfalia
Closeup of the stove and sink. Electric pump switch to left of the faucet, faucet knob to the right. Stove label reads, “It Is Not Safe To Use Cooking Appliances For Comfort Heating”. Notice they’re not forbidding it, just giving you a friendly warning. If the van blows up, it’s on you.
994 mile 1978 Westfalia
On the 76-79 Westfalias, the fridge is located in the shelf to the left of the bench seat. Earlier and later models had a larger upright fridge that was more user friendly. This is setup more like an electric cooler. In fact, the electric fridge was optional, standard was a non-powered cooler with a drainplug in the bottom.
994 mile 1978 Westfalia
The guts of the fridge and a small storage compartment are in the shelf next to the fridge.
994 mile 1978 Westfalia
Fridge and battery charger controls. The label to the left reads, “After converting the double bed into a bench please pull safety-belts out from between seat bench and back rest”. So polite!
994 mile 1978 Westfalia
Here is the bench seat converted into a double bed.
994 mile 1978 Westfalia
Double bed folded out inside pop top.
994 mile 1978 Westfalia
Inside pop top looking forward. Bed is folded back in storage position, giving plenty of headroom to stand inside van. Like a tent, the flap unzips to a screen and screen unzips for access to luggage rack, which doubles as a porch.
994 mile 1978 Westfalia
A benefit to moving all the cabinetry to the left side is to allow a swiveling front seat. It also reclines.
994 mile 1978 Westfalia
The Westfalia came with a removable table for the front. It doubles as a backsplash to put to the right of the stove so the driver seat doesn’t get splashed with grease. Owners manual advises to never use it while the vehicle is in motion. Quite a trick that would be with a manual transmission! It stores behind the driver seat.
Label below radio reads, “Drive only with pop-up top properly locked!” Less polite because that one’s really important.
994 mile 1978 Westfalia
Westfalias came with a removable screen for the back hatch. With the hatch open, doors closed with screened jalousie side windows open and pop top flap opened, there is great bug-free ventilation.
You can also close all the curtains for very cozy seclusion. Great place to spend an adventurous honeymoon! If you’re well past the honeymoon stage, you’ll note that Westfalia provides a cot which is installed above the front seats. It’s rated for children up to 90 pounds.
I mentioned that I have some personal history with these. During my formative years from about 7 to 16, my parents had a series of Westfalia camper vans which served as both family vacation-mobiles and daily drivers, just like the ad above says. The experience gave me both an appreciation and inherent dislike for these unique vehicles.
We started out with a 1968 model, which would have been about 10 years old when they got it. I was pretty young during that one’s time with us. The highlight that I remember distinctly was a trip to Colorado where we were driving through the mountains when the clutch went out. It was a bit harrowing but my dad managed to coast it into a town, where we were able to find a garage that could fix it. Of course they had to order the parts and we camped in their parking lot for a couple of nights.
We only had that one a couple of years, then my parents upgraded to a 1974 model. It was noticeably nicer, with more features and cloth seats instead of the 68’s vinyl. It was also an automatic. It was during this one’s tenure that I remember getting a real sense of just how slow it was compared to pretty much every other vehicle on the road. At least we had it during the era of the double nickel, otherwise the contrast would have been even more glaring.
On the highway, when I say it was slower than every other vehicle, that includes full size motorhomes, pickups pulling trailers and even most semi trucks. We made a couple more Colorado trips and there is nothing quite as embarrassing to a boy than getting passed on steep hills by semis, commercial buses, overladen stationwagons and maybe even a few bicycles. Perhaps my memory confabulated some of those, but you get the idea!
As I detailed earlier, VW bus engines had been upgraded significantly in the 70’s and had substantial power and torque increases (the opposite of American cars!). I remember my parents thought the 74 was faster than the 68, even with the auto. But we are still talking about a camper that adds about 400 lbs to the already 3,000lb van, plus luggage and supplies for a camping trip plus passengers, with the aerodynamics of a squared-off loaf of bread, all pushed along by an approx. 65hp air-cooled engine. That they go even as fast as they do is kind of a miracle.
The 74 was pretty reliable, as I recall, but we did get stranded in Amarillo, TX one summer when the fuel pump died. More parking lot camping. The van’s greatest hit, though, was on our trip to Mexico City. It made it there and back with no problems (thank God! I can’t imagine making that trip today).
994-mile 1978 Westfalia
When I was 15 and beginning to learn to drive, my parents had by this time once again upgraded, to a 1978 model. They got it at about 6 years old and pretty lightly used. It was a real creampuff and sported a 4 speed manual, as all VW buses should.
It’s my opinion that a VW van is the ideal vehicle to learn to drive on, because if you can drive that, you can drive anything. First there’s the driving position. You sit above the front wheels, which makes judging turns and distances significantly different (and more awkward) than normal. While you’re maneuvering, you also are steering without any power assistance. This is not a problem once you get a little speed, but at low speeds and especially stopped, there’s some grunting.
994-mile 1978 Westfalia
The biggest challenge, though, is shifting. The shifter is on the far opposite end of the vehicle from the transmission, of course, and it is about as imprecise as you might imagine that set up could be. It uses cables, but feels more like it uses rubber bands or maybe hydraulic lines filled with oatmeal. Just point the shifter in the general direction and hope you get it right, which you usually will, except for reverse, which takes a fair amount of practice before you can expect to get it on the first try. The clutch is none-too-precise, either, but I don’t remember having a lot of trouble with it. As you are learning to mush your way through shifting and merging with traffic, just remember to account for the leisurely acceleration. Relatively high torque (101 lbft @ 3000rpm) and low gearing (5.37:1 final drive) make the take off up to about 30 mph not unreasonable, but it falls off quickly as you approach highway speeds. If you make it to highway speeds, watch out for wind gusts. Some sailboats are less effective at catching the wind than a VW bus. For all these reasons and more, after driving a VW van, everything else feels easy.
Original plaid seats look to have been replaced by earlier non-headrest versions
Getting back to our original subject vehicle, this survivor is apparently pulling daily driver duties. Perhaps it’s being lived in, but there is a lot of miscellaneous stuff in it and the way-back is full of tools. It looks to be in pretty good condition, which makes it both a more valuable and harder-to-drive choice than many virtually all of the alternatives for a used work truck.
If it’s being lived in, though, the VW Westfalia Campmobile is still a great choice. After spending much of my childhood in them, my opinion has long been that they are excellent vehicles to stay in wherever you like to go camping, but not such great vehicles to get there in. I will always be grateful for the many nights I spent dreaming in pop-tops and the challenging times I spent in the driver seat. I have a deep affection for plaid and I’m pretty sure where that came from.
1978 (or maybe 76, 77 or 79) Westfalia photographed in Houston, TX 2/13/20
Plenty of related reading here. Perfect for this special time of distance and isolation:
Cars Of A Lifetime: 1977 VW Type 2 Westfalia – Concrete In The Console Heath McClure – This is a really entertaining read, especially if you ever spent any time in a VW bus. Probably the funniest CC article I’ve read, at least to me.
CC: 1960 VW Bus – On The Bus PN
CC 1960 VW Bus: On The Road and On The Bus (Hanna’s Road Trip Bus) PN
CC 1961 VW Transporter: A Rolling, Hard-Working, Living-History Mobile PN
CC: 1990 Volkswagen Vanagon Westfalia – Slow, Expensive, And Loved The World Over Tom Klockau
The Combi Evolution guide shows two variants I don’t think I’ve seen – a high-roof 1961 and a 1964 with a sliding side door. Do these really exist, and were they sold in the US.?
I loved these as a kid too, and some friends had some, but I never managed to snare a camping excursion in one.
Yes and yes and both are quite rare. I know of one of each of these in my state of Iowa, closest being Zanibar’s coffee high roof in Des Moines.
I’ll add a link to my first article at CC, on my ’71 tintop Campmobile:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-european/my-ex-curbside-classic-1971-vw-bus-the-mayfield-belle/
I still have the little stool from the van – the mustard-colored vinyl (sorry, no plaid!) is cracked on the sides, but is still holding up quite well.
One of my favorites out of the vehicles I’ve owned over the years.
Thanks for the link. I didn’t remember that article, but it’s a good one. I love the bomber paint job!
The camper variant always fascinated me – that it existed at all in any numbers. It seemed that by the 70s, when you saw one of these it was likely as not a camper – although I’m sure actual numbers were far short of that.
An aunt, uncle and cousins drove out from the east coast to visit our family, and they came in one of these. I remember looking inside and being amazed that a family of 5 could travel so far in one. These were efficient campers, but seemed very short on daytime seating compared with the big American vans I had become used to by that time. Maybe there was lots of floor-lounging in that pre-seat belt era.
Mrs JPC spent a lot of time in these, as her father’s business was VW repair. To this day she treats a gas pedal like an on-off switch, which I attribute to her formative years driving VWs (in which it kind of is one).
That’s funny about the on/off gas pedal. So true, but I have not had the same habit. I think the effect on me is that all my daily drivers save one have been V8 powered, because I don’t like slow cars. But I tend to drive conservatively. Weird.
I had a 73 Westy. The engine leaked oil straight into the heater boxes, filling the cabin with a light blue haze. I installed a Swifter Shifter kit (changes the stick fulcrum) which shortened the throws by about six inches. No more smashed knuckles shifting to third.
The carbs never stayed in sync for very long, but that may have been due to a vacuum leak in the pipe that ran to the brake booster. On the plus side, it ran like a locomotive, and had decent off-road capabilities. I kind of miss it, but I’d miss $110,000 a lot more.
Wait, you sold a ’73 Westy for $110k? Maybe I should put mine on the market 😉
Or did you mean $10k? In which case I’m keeping it!
We never had a Westy but sort of made our own campmobile out of our 68/69 model. My Dad built two HUGE wooden boxes that pretty much created an elevated floor with storage within and doubled as the “bed”.
Molasses-slow it was but at least it was a stick shift. I suppose the one (only?) advantage of the automatic variant might be that there would not be a call for “Bungee!” to stop it from popping out of 4th gear. I can’t think of another vehicle less suited for an automatic though, anything for an extra tenth of a percent of market share I suppose.
You forgot to mention that when you drive one after getting used to the clutch in something else, the torque and the soft springs up front would combine, when coupled with a less than smooth clutch release, to bounce the front end up and down in a manner rivaling anything that Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg might achieve with a hydraulic setup in an Impala in the parking lot of VIP records in Long Beach…Good times.
Wow, what a comprehensive article! It must have been a Herculean task putting it all together.
I can see a person who has never driven one of these before balking at the stick shift, but I can’t see keeping it for all those years in storage.
There are a lot of similarities on the inside to my ’81 Vanagon, even though they are two different generations. They actually share the same engine, so I’m quite used to its performance. When properly tuned with the valves adjusted and the points set, and all the other miscellanea of a classic VW engine being dialed in, they can run slow but steady forever.
Thanks, it was a labor of love/hate!
Never cared for the camper variants at all. In my mind, they’re the antithesis of what the VW bus was all about. Simple, extremely versatile, utilitarian, room for days for people or cargo.
Now you change it to have a very niche purpose, no room for excess anything and gussied up with a bunch of camping crap. No thanks.
I loved my 1960 Kombi, I really regret having sold that bus…
I can appreciate that perspective as the camper equipment certainly prevents the bus from being as useful as it could be as a driver.
On the other hand, they really are great campers. Not mobile homes, really, they aren’t like the rolling ranch homes you see at campgrounds, with a car towed behind and all the conveniences of home including AC, a shower and satellite TV. It’s a perfect vehicle if you like actually camping because the Westfalia is like the ultimate tent, but once you park it, it’s already set up. You are still “roughing it”, but much more convenient and comfortable.
I have the opposite mindset of Sam: Without the camper components, these are just ordinary vans. And if I wanted a van to haul stuff, an old VW would be my last choice. But for camping, or taking a mini-mancave and dressing room to the beach? Yes, please!
These aren’t slow. I grew up in an over-stuffed split-window, and we used to get regularly booked for being slower than traffic islands. It was, however, blessed with a very sweet gearshift, important when one wishes not to stretch a single of those 75 seconds before 60 was not quite reached and the Angry Horn’s chorus struck up from behind.
I spent plenty of time in a ’76 van too, though not a full camper, and that famed gearshift had become awful. I think it was all from the diagram they installed on the dash above it, a bizarre collapsing H: if you could follow that, you got a gear. Ofcourse, nobody could follow it, as it described something out of shape and three dimensional. (The answer was to remove the sticker, and not let it distract. The totally guessed results were better anyway, well, at least two out of four times). Bought new by my cousins – whose father had the mechanical sympathy of an angle grinder on crystal – it was not reliable, and I cursed it on many a shortened trip. Did love the racket, though. The two litre bought about a total change in sound, to a big chunky throb so beloved of WRXers, if a bit wincing at valve bounce where my witless uncle put it in every gear.
I read somewhere once that the door-locking and sliding mechanism – another sore point on that VW from new – was made under licence to whatever remained of (I think) Van DenPlas. They had made a lovely 2-door dhc on a Derby Bentley chassis in about ’37, and fitted ultra-chic sliding doors to it. Someone at VW somehow saw it or knew of it when the design of the ’68 was being done. (Now, to really annoy everyone, I KNOW I read this and saw the car in photos, but have never been able to find a trace of it since. Oh well, if I did dream it, it’s a nice thought that the Everyman’s bus has the door mechanism from a super-posh ’30’s roadster, no?)
Westys weren’t much sold in Oz, but the locally-assembled vans were converted in quite some numbers here by local outfits.
Actually, perhaps the numbers weren’t that high.
You see, after the initial (exxy) ownership period new, then perhaps a second period of 2nd hand respectability (if already engine no. 3), they descended into the Great Tour, right round Australia. For decades, German backpacker tourists would turn up, and buy a camper in a coastal, usually tropical place like Cairns. They would lap the country, end up back in Cairns 3 months later, and sell it to the next fresh-faced Swedes. They in turn did the same lap, and on it went to some rosy-cheeked Englanders. Why, the VW reliability was legendary, wasn’t it? Thing is, no-one ever serviced these vans, despite the harsh conditions, and every second lapper fitted the next engine when due, but gott in Himmel, what a fantastic bus it was, when going. This kept VW shops open around the land for years. Now, Eventually, the Euros twigged to the scam, and they all bought zillion mile Toyota vans instead, which did (and do) all of their laps on the cylinders and block and head they were born with. Their reliability is NOT a legend.
This why the numbers here are unclear. There seemed to be thousands of the damn things all the time, but in fact it was probably the same old ones going past on their latest tour of duty, something further confused by the possible addition of new and varied paint schemes.
Not now, ofcourse. Now every one of them has been “fully restored” and “the rust cut out” and “regretful sale” of a “much loved family member” and is $50,000. The truth, respectively, translates as resprayed, bogged-over, the end of a regretful purchase, by loved family member we mean your scrounging money-sucking druggie cousin – well, someone loves him, surely, and he’s a family member – and an intrinsic value of a failed lawnmower.
For $100,000, there are other things to buy. Like houses. It’s an awful lot to pay for slightly false memories of times past.
Great article, Jon. I reckon you’d be dead right that MANY erstwhile enthusiasts lost their interest, their nerve and possibly their bowel contents after a freeway drive in a wild storm, and sold the van soon after.
Thanks for the tales from down under! 110k is quite a surreal figure.
100k is conservative down under my mates 66 split is worth 40k as it sits wit knackered mechanicals and pieces cut out of the body a genuine low mileage westy is worth gold. Transport world paid more than that for exactly the right westy recently it had to be mint and identical to the owners OE van they found one bought it and shipped it.
A most excellent article on the classic Westy! It’s been long overdue here at CC.
My first ride in one was in Iowa City, in about 1962 or 1963, when some German expats at the university bought a new US market Westy T1, wit the new 1500cc engine. My whole family joined them (they had 2 kids ) in a communal ride down to Lake Darling, about 45 minutes south of Iowa City. It was a preview of future experiences of many hot and odorous bodies crammed into a VW bus.
I scored the little luggage area over the engine behind the rear seat, and I have very vivid memories of it, and loving the interior of that early Westy, but not all the bodies.
When I hitchhiked back to Iowa in 1971, my old school friend’s dad, a doctor, had just bought a new ’70 Westy. We had some memorable late-winter camping experiences in that, including having to clean up the barf one of my other friends spewed into it after too much imbibing. It was now truly broken in.
I could go on for some time, all my Westy memories. A neighbor, an older woman, has an immaculate T1 Westy in her garage, from about ’64 or so. I shot it once when it was parked outside, but never wrote it up. Once in a while I see her driving it around the neighborhood. I would not be surprised if it fetches a hefty sum if it’s ever sold. It looks like new.
I subscribe to a magazine called Iowa Outdoors and an issue from last year featured a campsite scene from the mid-late 1960s with a red/white splitty Westy. I looked but could not find that issue again around the house. I’ll keep digging for it.
A friend in Cincinnati had a ’73 that blew up (thru over heating) on I-90 in eastern Montana. More than a few did in 90 degree weather at 65 MPH. Flew home and back to Billings 2 weeks later to bring home with a rebuilt motor. He still loved it!
I drove a 54/5 beetle a lot while at highschool single tailpipe edition 25or 30hp whatever 0-50 you could measure with a wristwatch, 0-60 required a calendar or a slight downhill on level going it simply stopped accelerating at our then 55mph speed limit and acceleration util that point was glacial, 1200cc vans are just a roadblock I’m sure they were never intended to be used outside town speed limits a friend has a 66 he brought with him from the UK its got a 1560 twin carb header equipped built engine it was fine in the UK rattled along with the best of traffic here its in the lower gears most of the time when it gets pointed up hill, two years NZ use killed the engine literally, my uncle had a 1200cc bus 9 kids what other choices were there, it turns out my dads lightly used HR Holden wagon was his next one it was a rocket ship after the Kombi van.
I had a 1600 twinport 68 van it was ok on flat going and inland Aussie has lots of that but the cost of another engine meant it went for scrap when it ate a piston, just like NZ VWs were expensive to keep going there, they were never cheap cars like in the US popular yes but never cheap and parts were and are the same.
In 1962, I had a mile-plus uphill race on an Alaskan mountain grade with a VW camper. I was driving my 17hp Fiat 500. He had pulled out to pass as we were starting up the grade, but we stayed side-by-side most of the way up. I was a car length (which in my case was not quite 10′) ahead at the crest, and easily ran off and hid on the winding downhill portion. Lucky for him there was no oncoming traffic before the crest …
How things change, though. Forty years later I’m driving my Alfa Milano pretty hard on the very curvy Pasadena Freeway, and a Eurovan comes up on my tail. I give the Alfa a little extra boot – who does this brick-driver think he is? – and two bends later he’s still on my butt! I pulled away on the next long straight, glad there was no CHP presence, but with a whole lot of new respect for VW’s advances in chassis engineering.
When I was in elementary school in the ’60s, Dad had a series of VW beetles, and one microbus.
When one of the VWs was in the shop for repairs, he actually had a double cab pickup as a loaner for a day or 2-3. Even as a little kid, I thought it was really cool!
He made some kind of swap/cash deal and for a brief moment, owned a 1959 VW camper. We never camped in it, and as far as I know, it never got driven again after he brought it home and parked it (he very quickly sold it). I remember looking in it and being impressed by all of the varnished wood.
My only experience driving one at all was a short drive in a Type 1 sometime in the 70’s.
BOTH VW buses I’ve seen & managed to get shots of are T2 models. The first was a 2-tone red & white one that would be a ’73 at the oldest–turn signals are above headlights and front bumper doesn’t wrap around. I spotted this one in Lexington, SC back in June 2017 when I still had my ’96 Ford Aerostar. Continued seeing it once or twice in later months, haven’t seen it anymore since. For all I know it might have wound up in the junkyard like the Aerostar eventually did the following year after too many things about to bring it down at once (deer hits, transmission failure, busted water pump, damage from previous ownership).
The second was all blue except for the bumpers & what looked like the pop-top on the Kombi & Westfalia/Campmobile conversions, except it didn’t fully extend across the roof like on most T2s configured that way. This one would be a ’68 to ’71–turn signals are below headlights and front bumper wraps around–but NOT a ’72 when the tail lights were changed (I looked from the back & it still the T1-style lights). I found it in Edisto Beach on my vacation this past September when I was driving my ’05 Chevrolet Astro around looking at all the sights; more likely to stick around for longer than the other as it’s locally owned by Coot’s Bar & Grill in that area. The other thing both vans share is the lack of the VW logo on the front!
That’s a nice one! Maybe it is a non-Westfalia conversion.
I learned to drive a stick in my dad’s 1977 VW Bus. I agree-if you can drive one of these, you can drive anything. The clutch in dad’s bus was worn out due to is propensity for revving the hell out of the motor and slipping the hell out of the clutch to get it underway…..kinda sounding like this: vrOOOmVAAROOOM(slipslipslip)VAAAAAchugalugVrooooOOOOM (*valve float as you attempt to shift into second…). He was the sane person who would drive it around town in high gear at 15 mph (just because the 1948 Plymouth he learned to drive when he was 16 was able to do it, he expected every single car he had ever owned to be able to do the same feat…but I digress.)
The shift pattern was definitely theoretical especially finding reverse. No two attempts were the same. Press down and stir anywhere from one to fifteen times in a counterclockwise pattern and you’ll eventually find it. It was the classic wobble-stick shifter.
Crosswinds? The one useful thing Dad actually showed me was the Official VW Transporter Crosswind Countering Hands on the Steering Wheel Position: left hand at 9:00 holding onto the steering wheel rim and the right hand holding onto the R/H steering wheel spoke. It actually worked…
Personally, I got a kick from the heater controls on the dash. They reminded me of the levers at the console in the Transporter (coincidence on the name?) Room of the USS Enterprise that Scotty wound use to beam everyone up or down. Too bad the ones in dad’s 1977 couldn’t be used to beam up some heat from the engine bay to keep us from being flash frozen in the winter……
LOL…good stuff! I seem to remember my dad using that steering wheel position on trips.
I never thought of that Star Trek transporter link. I was thinking of saying something about the vans’ laughably ineffective heat, but couldn’t find a good place in the story. The heat was pathetic. What little heat might have been marginally useful in the Beetle was lost in the long trip forward in the van.
I really need to do another write up. I could do one on one of my Buses. I’ve owned four Buses. One baywindow and three split windows, including the ’63 I have now.
The shifters on these are actually a rod, just like a Beetle. But the rod is longer and has many bushings on the underside that get exposed to the elements. The end result is exactly as described though. You push the rod into certain general areas and hope that it finds a good gear to pop into
We have a ’78 Westfalia. We drove that van all over. It has been a reliable van for us but we were always too poor back when we drove it daily to actually repair it properly. They weren’t bad vans, but they were maintenance intensive compared to a Toyota or a Honda. Alas, we started to restore our van, and then the babies started coming (x2) and our first mortgage, and finishing college, etc. and suddenly it is 20 years later – and the van is still sitting there – garaged and in a million pieces. THIS YEAR is the year I’ll get it going again as I finally have the space, the time and the money to do it.
By the way – the transmission shifter does not work on cables. It works on a hollow steel tube just like the Beetle only longer. Once the bushings start to wear, the shifting gets more and more vague. And everyone knows aircooled VWs are normally very neglected. And normally owned by people who don’t know how to work on them or can’t afford to do so. 😉
There is a section of John Muir’s “Idiot Manual” that explains how to drive an aircooled VW and make it last. There are shift points related to speed that if well followed will help the engine be as durable, efficient and cool as it can be. It takes alot of patience to drive a 40-65 HP vehicle in 2021 where everyone else seems to have between 300 and 900 HP.
I’ve carefully removed my VW engine and transmission and replaced it with a Corvair 110HP engine. Ought to be able to keep up with mail delivery trucks and Yugos now…
Great article!
Great article and very pleasing to see that our ‘78 Westy Campmobile appears to remain completely original using your 994 miler as reference. We live in the UK but the camper came from CA around Santa Barbara we believe. It is the Champagne Deluxe edition which means tinted windows, brown dash and a few other extras. I will try to upload some photos. Given how good the interior is on our bus I suspect the 50k miles on the clock is correct.
Regards
Steve
I own a 78 Westfalia Campmobile, it looks exactly like the one in the subject photos. It’s yellow with 110,000 original miles. All original equipment, including the 2 tables and center bench seat. I even have the complete side tent. I’m the 3rd owner and have for 33 years. It runs great! Thinking of selling it for $35K.
I live in Saskatchewan, A land where the North American Natives have been around for 10,000 years but the local White Man refuses to let that out. I need to get to Hollywood and Lobby the Movie Industry for Co-Producers. The cheapest way is to drive down and sleep in my pristine 1978 Volkswagen Convertible that I bought NEW in 1978 from an Edmonton Dealer. (Southgate VW) 1776cc, dual throat intake, Duel 40mm Solex Carbs, New Top, Real Leather Seats, Porsche 914 Aluminum Wheels with custom billet Wolfsburg center caps, Engine has been upgraded 3 times with improvements each time, like a counter-balanced Crankshaft, an Engle 110 camshaft, Porsche 401 Heads and a Bullet Proof Kennedy Clutch. Sony Disc Player. I would trade this beauty for a Westy in LA or on my way to LA. This car does the quarter mile in 16.5 sec.
I live in Saskatchewan, A land where the North American Natives have been around for 10,000 years but the local White Man refuses to let that out. I need to get to Hollywood and Lobby the Movie Industry for Co-Producers. The cheapest way is to drive down and sleep in my pristine 1978 Volkswagen Convertible that I bought NEW in 1978 from an Edmonton Dealer. (Southgate VW) 1776cc, dual throat intake, Duel 40mm Solex Carbs, New Top, Real Leather Seats, Porsche 914 Aluminum Wheels with custom billet Wolfsburg center caps, Engine has been upgraded 3 times with improvements each time, like a counter-balanced Crankshaft, an Engle 110 camshaft, Porsche 401 Heads and a Bullet Proof Kennedy Clutch. Sony Disc Player. I would trade this beauty for a Westy in LA or on my way to LA. This car does the quarter mile in 16.5 sec.