39 Comments on Volkswagen just re-released the hippy-van
That means i’s just as underpowered as it ever was.
“it’s”, not “i’s”. Although I’s underpowered too, these days.
(UnderEDITed, also… )
Good. I’d rather the hippies and watermelons put money into the bank accounts of producers of valuable things like cars and trucks than into the pockets of tie-dyed shirt vendors and bong makers. VW is more likely to put that money to use by capital investment.
Duuuuude….since it’s, like, ALWAYS seen at the beach, why didn’t they, like, do it with hydroelectric power?!
I had a gray colored 61 VW camper bus (I paid $750 for it) back in the early 70’s that wouldn’t go 60-65 mph if it was shot out of a cannon. Nothing like gutless 36 horse power motors, I got passed by anything and everything when I had it. At the time I thought it was pretty cool, I wouldn’t be caught dead in it now. But stupid baby boomers now are paying big bucks for the damned things which is the only reason I should’ve kept it to sell it to an aging hippie collector. And to make matters worse my brother painted Mr. Natural on the drivers door in his Keep on trucking pose. I also have pictures of that VW van and myself with long straggly hair right before I joined the Navy in 1972. My kids don’t believe that it’s me in that picture.
If you had it today, you could paint a big hammer and sickle on the driver’s door and sell it to Bernie Sanders.
My dad bought a new 1966 camper model, we went to Yosemite in it.
People would laugh as they passed us on the steep uphills, (can’t imagine what a joke an electric model would be).
It was a nice van.
I bought one in 78 with no motor or tires but never got it built, moved to the South.
It’s electric? And for that reason… I’m out.
Where do they get their coal or natural gas?…
At least Mr. Natural was cooler than Bernie Sanders will ever hope to be. And he was an imaginary dope smoking stoner whereas Bernie is not really imaginary and actually believes all that communist crap. Bernie’s a loser who can not win, I don’t think the American people would ever vote for him in enough numbers to elect him as President. I’d even bet that good old socialist Norman Thomas would still get more votes for President than Bernie would and he was a perennial socialist candidate many times over. My best friend had a 58 VW beetle in HS that had 30 horsepower. He called it Hitler’s revenge or the Bavarian Butt F**ker. Of which I towed with a chain from Priest Lake, Id. about 80-90 miles back to Spokane with my 55 Chevy station wagon when his VW broke down. We were damned lucky we didn’t get stopped by a cop for being young and stupid doing this but we made it back safely.
They’ll still be buying those, along with peace signs for the rear window.
My best friend and his dad each a VW bus. We used them for hunting and fishing. A deer could easily be put inside. While the bus was rather underpowered on the highway, the 65hp engine was torquey and provided good performance for off-road applications. The engine over the drive wheels provided good traction. We had those buses in places only 4X4s would go.
We just called ’em the Nazi Shitbox. The damn things were unsafe as hell in an accident. All that was between you and the car in front of you was a thin piece of sheet metal!
When I was 15, I had a Mr. Natural patch sewed to my traveling bag that I hitchhiked across the country with, it said “Just Passin Through” on it. The bag was a green army surplus engineers bag.
You can get 140 MPH out of one if you put a Porsche engine in it.
Out of high school, I had a ’69 bug. Good car- economical, reliable and easy to work on. Wish I still had it. And my current Syncro rocks, if I do say so. And no, neither are hot rods.
Due to attrition, scarcity and nostalgia, prices are rising on all the things we grew up with, and probably took for granted.
Now with the perspective of 30 or 40 years, we may be able to evaluate them with a wider view.
Have you priced an old Camaro lately? Or a Mustang or a Chevelle? Or, for that matter, a Colt Woodsman or even an M1 Carbine?
Aging hippie my eye.
Don’t you mean they “rehashed’ it?
A friend of mine had one when we were teenagers. It was so roomy inside that we once switched places easily while driving on the highway at 60mph, me taking the driver seat from him.
No, I would not recommend doing that now.
The original “SmartCar” ??
And it still doesn’t come with soap and water.
This story has been kicking around for quite a while now.
The van has not been released. It exists only as a concept. It is not in production, and the motor has not been decided on yet.
If it is produced, it will likely have a Diesel motor, as VW has considerable experience with them, and little experience with electrics.
If it hits the market looking like the concept, the retro styling should boost sales.
The microbus with safari windows pictured above is not the vehicle in question.
My wife and I had a bright red 69 VW Beetle back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. It was one of my favorite cars, fun, reliable and very good driving in Winter weather. Wish we would’ve kept it but after our son was born in 82 unfortunately it was too small. We should’ve kept it as a 2nd car but couldn’t afford to do so at the time. Of course my wife always wanted a vintage early 70’s Karman Ghia convertible.
Portal axles in the early microbuses made them surprisingly capable off road. Gear reduction in those axles limited top speed.
They were a lot tougher than people think. As with any vehicle, one should avoid head-on collisions.
I owned a 1970 VW in 1982. My windshield defroster in winter was an ice scrapper (it helped if you had apassenger in the front seat). The steering worm gear was so worn the steering wheel had about 90 degrees play. I think it went about 70mph on a flat road. The only thing I miss in conjunction with the vehicle is my youth and the matress in the back.
I had a 1958 panel van with a 100 horsepower motor I built for it.
The brakes sucked on that thing. It had the original cargo divider right in back of the front seat and I had it diamond tuck and rolled along with the rest of the upholstery in the front. Lots of interesting times we had in it, no one could see in the back from outside.
One day I was flooring it on hwy101 doing about a 100+ (that’s where the speedometer pinned out), thinking I was really moving when along came a VW camper van that passed me 15 mph faster.
.Yeah, pretty much a death trap.
In ’74 I bought a ’67 Westphalia camper. Table, fridge, couch, bed,cabinets and a blown motor. Put a 4 cyl. Porche motor in it and could do 85 mph on the flats. Hippy chicks would bathe just to go on a picnic in that thing.
I believe that, yes I do.
(Snort!) “BWAAHHAHAHAAAAAAAA…..!!!!”
Sorry – you were saying…?
đŸ™‚
Thaks! I really enjoyed the link!
If the speedometer was in kph you were going about 62 mph, which is why you were being passed up. My 1958 VW in Germany would do 120 kph (about 75 mph) with the gas pedal to the floorboard in still air. With a headwind it would do 70 mph; a tailwind got you 80. On the autobahn you drove with the pedal to the floor and hoped some big Mercedes didn’t blow you off the road doing 120 mph. That’s no joke, by the way.
Mini bus with a Mini Gun. Nobody beats the Magpul bus in traffic.
In SoCal during the dune buggy rage, the absolute hottest setup was a portal axel with a Corvair turbo engine, the axel could handle the torque the bigger engine could turn some big meats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsaBYyjhHuo
//
My dad had a friend in the 70s who was clocked at 140 MPH on the salt flats in a 1960s VW van with a Porsche engine. There is no video of that.
@ bayouwolf-
Did you notice the peace symbol on the back window?
Magpul has some nice toys.
I’ve owned 4 VWs including a ’73 bus. If you had time on your hands and mechanical skills they could be fun, but you better have a back-up vehicle. On my ’61 beetle I got to be real good at dropping the engine; my best time was 20 minutes. Lots of funny stories that weren’t so funny at the time.
Volkswagen just got its entire diesel engine product line shoved right up their asses. No telling how long they have been programming their computers to circumvent US auto emission standards, but they have frozen sales for 2015 across the board.
Anyone else see the irony of them trying to market an electric hippy bus to the same crowd that has been buying their supposedly “Green” diesel cars??
Well, damn – I guess such a thing IS possible, although you’d think the wind resistance alone would prevent those kind of speeds. That being said, I wouldn’t even want to drive a regular car 140 MPH, much less a crackerbox like that. One slip-up (or blowout) and your FahrvergnĂ¼gen’s gonna be spread all over the highway…
đŸ˜‰
Wow, this makes me feel really old,but we had one in 1966
due to 8 children and 2 parents (ya know one of each kind)
My older brother loved to take all the high school friends to the drive in. During summers my mother made me pay her gas money to drive to a waitress job.Sucker ran for ever. Got my own car 3 years later.
That means i’s just as underpowered as it ever was.
“it’s”, not “i’s”. Although I’s underpowered too, these days.
(UnderEDITed, also… )
Good. I’d rather the hippies and watermelons put money into the bank accounts of producers of valuable things like cars and trucks than into the pockets of tie-dyed shirt vendors and bong makers. VW is more likely to put that money to use by capital investment.
Duuuuude….since it’s, like, ALWAYS seen at the beach, why didn’t they, like, do it with hydroelectric power?!
I had a gray colored 61 VW camper bus (I paid $750 for it) back in the early 70’s that wouldn’t go 60-65 mph if it was shot out of a cannon. Nothing like gutless 36 horse power motors, I got passed by anything and everything when I had it. At the time I thought it was pretty cool, I wouldn’t be caught dead in it now. But stupid baby boomers now are paying big bucks for the damned things which is the only reason I should’ve kept it to sell it to an aging hippie collector. And to make matters worse my brother painted Mr. Natural on the drivers door in his Keep on trucking pose. I also have pictures of that VW van and myself with long straggly hair right before I joined the Navy in 1972. My kids don’t believe that it’s me in that picture.
If you had it today, you could paint a big hammer and sickle on the driver’s door and sell it to Bernie Sanders.
My dad bought a new 1966 camper model, we went to Yosemite in it.
People would laugh as they passed us on the steep uphills, (can’t imagine what a joke an electric model would be).
It was a nice van.
I bought one in 78 with no motor or tires but never got it built, moved to the South.
It’s electric? And for that reason… I’m out.
Where do they get their coal or natural gas?…
At least Mr. Natural was cooler than Bernie Sanders will ever hope to be. And he was an imaginary dope smoking stoner whereas Bernie is not really imaginary and actually believes all that communist crap. Bernie’s a loser who can not win, I don’t think the American people would ever vote for him in enough numbers to elect him as President. I’d even bet that good old socialist Norman Thomas would still get more votes for President than Bernie would and he was a perennial socialist candidate many times over. My best friend had a 58 VW beetle in HS that had 30 horsepower. He called it Hitler’s revenge or the Bavarian Butt F**ker. Of which I towed with a chain from Priest Lake, Id. about 80-90 miles back to Spokane with my 55 Chevy station wagon when his VW broke down. We were damned lucky we didn’t get stopped by a cop for being young and stupid doing this but we made it back safely.
They’ll still be buying those, along with peace signs for the rear window.
My best friend and his dad each a VW bus. We used them for hunting and fishing. A deer could easily be put inside. While the bus was rather underpowered on the highway, the 65hp engine was torquey and provided good performance for off-road applications. The engine over the drive wheels provided good traction. We had those buses in places only 4X4s would go.
We just called ’em the Nazi Shitbox. The damn things were unsafe as hell in an accident. All that was between you and the car in front of you was a thin piece of sheet metal!
When I was 15, I had a Mr. Natural patch sewed to my traveling bag that I hitchhiked across the country with, it said “Just Passin Through” on it. The bag was a green army surplus engineers bag.
You can get 140 MPH out of one if you put a Porsche engine in it.
Out of high school, I had a ’69 bug. Good car- economical, reliable and easy to work on. Wish I still had it. And my current Syncro rocks, if I do say so. And no, neither are hot rods.
Due to attrition, scarcity and nostalgia, prices are rising on all the things we grew up with, and probably took for granted.
Now with the perspective of 30 or 40 years, we may be able to evaluate them with a wider view.
Have you priced an old Camaro lately? Or a Mustang or a Chevelle? Or, for that matter, a Colt Woodsman or even an M1 Carbine?
Aging hippie my eye.
Don’t you mean they “rehashed’ it?
A friend of mine had one when we were teenagers. It was so roomy inside that we once switched places easily while driving on the highway at 60mph, me taking the driver seat from him.
No, I would not recommend doing that now.
The original “SmartCar” ??
And it still doesn’t come with soap and water.
This story has been kicking around for quite a while now.
The van has not been released. It exists only as a concept. It is not in production, and the motor has not been decided on yet.
If it is produced, it will likely have a Diesel motor, as VW has considerable experience with them, and little experience with electrics.
If it hits the market looking like the concept, the retro styling should boost sales.
The microbus with safari windows pictured above is not the vehicle in question.
My wife and I had a bright red 69 VW Beetle back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. It was one of my favorite cars, fun, reliable and very good driving in Winter weather. Wish we would’ve kept it but after our son was born in 82 unfortunately it was too small. We should’ve kept it as a 2nd car but couldn’t afford to do so at the time. Of course my wife always wanted a vintage early 70’s Karman Ghia convertible.
Portal axles in the early microbuses made them surprisingly capable off road. Gear reduction in those axles limited top speed.
https://www.google.com/search?q=baja+bus&biw=1088&bih=485&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAWoVChMIu4XN_eaGyAIVRqOICh0ntwyM
They were a lot tougher than people think. As with any vehicle, one should avoid head-on collisions.
I owned a 1970 VW in 1982. My windshield defroster in winter was an ice scrapper (it helped if you had apassenger in the front seat). The steering worm gear was so worn the steering wheel had about 90 degrees play. I think it went about 70mph on a flat road. The only thing I miss in conjunction with the vehicle is my youth and the matress in the back.
I had a 1958 panel van with a 100 horsepower motor I built for it.
The brakes sucked on that thing. It had the original cargo divider right in back of the front seat and I had it diamond tuck and rolled along with the rest of the upholstery in the front. Lots of interesting times we had in it, no one could see in the back from outside.
One day I was flooring it on hwy101 doing about a 100+ (that’s where the speedometer pinned out), thinking I was really moving when along came a VW camper van that passed me 15 mph faster.
.Yeah, pretty much a death trap.
In ’74 I bought a ’67 Westphalia camper. Table, fridge, couch, bed,cabinets and a blown motor. Put a 4 cyl. Porche motor in it and could do 85 mph on the flats. Hippy chicks would bathe just to go on a picnic in that thing.
I believe that, yes I do.
(Snort!) “BWAAHHAHAHAAAAAAAA…..!!!!”
Sorry – you were saying…?
đŸ™‚
Thaks! I really enjoyed the link!
If the speedometer was in kph you were going about 62 mph, which is why you were being passed up. My 1958 VW in Germany would do 120 kph (about 75 mph) with the gas pedal to the floorboard in still air. With a headwind it would do 70 mph; a tailwind got you 80. On the autobahn you drove with the pedal to the floor and hoped some big Mercedes didn’t blow you off the road doing 120 mph. That’s no joke, by the way.
Mini bus with a Mini Gun. Nobody beats the Magpul bus in traffic.
…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLQWd7H3s8E…
In SoCal during the dune buggy rage, the absolute hottest setup was a portal axel with a Corvair turbo engine, the axel could handle the torque the bigger engine could turn some big meats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsaBYyjhHuo
//
My dad had a friend in the 70s who was clocked at 140 MPH on the salt flats in a 1960s VW van with a Porsche engine. There is no video of that.
@ bayouwolf-
Did you notice the peace symbol on the back window?
Magpul has some nice toys.
I’ve owned 4 VWs including a ’73 bus. If you had time on your hands and mechanical skills they could be fun, but you better have a back-up vehicle. On my ’61 beetle I got to be real good at dropping the engine; my best time was 20 minutes. Lots of funny stories that weren’t so funny at the time.
Volkswagen just got its entire diesel engine product line shoved right up their asses. No telling how long they have been programming their computers to circumvent US auto emission standards, but they have frozen sales for 2015 across the board.
Anyone else see the irony of them trying to market an electric hippy bus to the same crowd that has been buying their supposedly “Green” diesel cars??
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle#/media/File:Thomas_Parker_Electric_car.jpg
Well, damn – I guess such a thing IS possible, although you’d think the wind resistance alone would prevent those kind of speeds. That being said, I wouldn’t even want to drive a regular car 140 MPH, much less a crackerbox like that. One slip-up (or blowout) and your FahrvergnĂ¼gen’s gonna be spread all over the highway…
đŸ˜‰
Wow, this makes me feel really old,but we had one in 1966
due to 8 children and 2 parents (ya know one of each kind)
My older brother loved to take all the high school friends to the drive in. During summers my mother made me pay her gas money to drive to a waitress job.Sucker ran for ever. Got my own car 3 years later.