Yahoo Autos The Most Famous Volkswagen Buses
The much-anticipated new VW ID.Buzz, which is finally launching in the U.S., owes much of its appeal to the original VW's immense cultural impact. As much as it is a vehicular icon, the VW bus is a cultural touchstone as well. When its friendly face shows up on screen, everyone recognizes it. It's part of pop culture and part of history, trudging through the decades at a snail's pace, that air-cooled flat-four engine working hard but never giving up. Here's a look at some of the most famous VW Buses over the years, the ones that established its immortality.
The Plattenwagen
We begin with a vehicle that is perhaps not widely known but is a part of VW Bus history you just can't leave out. With World War II just ended, and the Volkswagen factory rebuilding to start producing the basic little Type 1 we'd come to know as the Beetle, workers at the plant needed a way to shuttle parts around. Unfortunately, the British Army, which was managing the plant, suddenly asked for all their forklifts back.
Major Ivan Hirst, who oversaw Volkswagen in the immediate postwar period, came up with a solution: a repurposed VW chassis with a flat platform up front and a rear cab over the rear engine, first built in 1946. It looked like a cross between a Jeep and a hay wagon, but it worked so well that VW kept building them all the way until 1973 as factory utility vehicles.
Ben Pon, a Dutch importer of Volkswagens who shipped the first Beetle to the U.S. (unsuccessfully, as he failed to establish an import business here), spotted Plattenwagens scurrying around the factory on a visit. He sketched out a boxy, loaf-of-bread shape and convinced Hirst that a cargo-carrying VW variant would be a commercial hit. By 1950, the first Volkswagen Type 2 Buses were hitting the road.
1951 Westfalia "Camping Box"
Also a British-influenced vehicle, the first camperized VW Bus was created at the request of an unnamed British Army officer based in Germany who wanted a mobile camper for holidaying around the country. The job went to Westfalia, a coachbuilding specialist that had roots stretching back to the mid-19th century.
Westfalia's engineers installed double-opening side "barn doors," a couch, a folding table, and interior cabinets. The pop-up roof, allowing people to stand up while inside the van, wouldn't arrive until later models. Westfalia called this modified van the Camping Box and moved it into full production by the mid-1950s.
Returning American servicemen started bringing them home, and by the 1960s, a Westfalia was a familiar sight at campsites all over the U.S. It's such a recognizable machine that Lego made a version of it based on a 1962 camper.
Esau and Janie Jenkins Civil Rights 1966 VW Bus
Part of the VW Bus's appeal was shared with the Beetle, in that it was inexpensive to buy and cheap to run. Simple construction and a small-displacement air-cooled engine meant that it was easy on fuel as long as you weren't in a hurry, but it was usefully sized. For Esau and Janie Jenkins of South Carolina, a VW Bus was the perfect vehicle for enacting change.
The Jenkinses were very active in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and their 1966 Bus has been listed in the National Historic Vehicle Register for its importance. It was used to drive workers to jobs and children to school, while at the same time the Jenkins educated riders about their rights and freedoms. On the back is painted Esau's slogan, "Love is progress, hate is expensive."
1969 VW Light Bus
Along with being a useful working vehicle, people transporter, and camper, the VW Bus became part of the counterculture of the 1960s. It was cheap to buy a used one, you could live out of it if you had no other place to go, and it was the ideal machine for following around a band on tour.
Or, if you were the band, then the flat sides of a Bus were the perfect rolling billboard. Painted up in psychedelic colors by muralist Dr. Bob Heironimus, this 11-window 1963 Deluxe carried the Baltimore-based band Light to Woodstock in 1969. When a cop tried to turn the band away at the gates because parking was full, guitarist Bob Grimm quickly claimed that the van was actually part of an art exhibit. They got through and parked it next to the stage. It was photographed many times, and those photos made their way around the world.
But along with the sunny hippie symbology, there was also a darker side to the VW's subculture roots. Around the same time as Woodstock, Charles Manson's group of followers were stealing many Volkswagens, and at least two Buses were among the cars driven by the group.
Porsche Renndienst
Porsche and Volkswagen have, of course, a long association, and when the former went racing, the latter wasn't far behind. As a parts transporter and mechanic's van, a brightly-colored VW Bus was the ideal support vehicle, even towing Porsche race cars to events.
"Renndienst" literally translates to "racing service," and Porsche is so fond of this part of its history that it has rec=reated a modern version twice. First, Stuttgart built the Vision Renndienst concept in 2020, an electrified modern van. This past year, Porsche took an ID. Buzz, painted it the same Burgundy Red as the originals, and applied the Porsche racing livery. It's a fitting tribute.
Porsche B32
The Renndienst vans aren't the most fun thing to come out of Porsche's racing history. Instead, here's a support vehicle that looks like an ordinary Volkswagen T3 van from the 1980s, but is fitted with the go-fast bits out of a Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2.
With a 3.2-liter flat-six, 911 disc brakes, and 16-inch Fuchs wheels, the B32 is one of the rarest Porsches ever made—it's not just a conversion, but actually got a Porsche VIN. It was created out of the need for a support vehicle that could keep up when Porsche was developing the 953 and later 959 rally cars. Roughly half a dozen were made, and reportedly there was a lottery for Porsche engineers to get to take it home for the weekend and go blow the doors off sports cars on the autobahn.
Dr. Kevorkian's 1968 Volkswagen
Perhaps more infamous than famous in the 1990s was the white VW Van belonging to Dr. Jack Kevorkian, advocate for euthanasia. A number of Dr. Kevorkian's assisted suicides were carried out in the van, which was sold in 2015 to the host of a reality show based on paranormal investigations.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High's 1967 VW Bus
By the 1980s, seeing a VW Bus on screen was shorthand for hippie culture. Certainly that was the case with the fictional Jeff Spicoli's red and yellow 1967 Bus, with Sean Penn tumbling out into the high school parking lot in a cloud of marijuana smoke.
Back to the Future's 1967 Transporter
Yet a Bus could also be menacing. An unlikely car chase participant, a 1967 blue-on-white VW Bus with a sunroof hunted after Marty McFly's DeLorean time machine in 1985's Back to the Future, one of its terrorist occupants firing an AK-47 (pretty ineffectively) at the car.
Uh-oh, he's got an RPG7. "Let's see if you [expletive deleted] can do 90," quips Michael J. Fox, and promptly travels back to 1955 and drives into a barn. He didn't need to: A '67 VW Bus will only do 65 mph, and then only if you're very patient about getting up to that speed.
Little Miss Sunshine
As transport for a dysfunctional family just trying not to fall apart on a road trip, a bright yellow 1979 VW Bus isn't just a van, it's a central character. The scene where the entire family has to push-start the van and then run alongside and jump in the door will resonate with anyone who has ever broken down in a VW Bus.
Futurama
How long will Volkswagen bus fandom last? Well, at least until the year 3000, according to an episode of the animated show Futurama. In the episode "Bendin' in the wind," main character Fry rescues an old Volkswagen van and manages to get it running on whale oil, and then ends up following around wisecracking robot Bender's folk band on their tour. There's a great gag where Professor Farnsworth asks where this ancient van's device is for speeding up or slowing down time, and Fry produces a bong from beneath the seat.
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