Some models are bringing very high prices these days. This one sold in Australia recently for $157,000. Another one sold several years ago brought over $200k. HIGH DOLLAR BUS

Very cool. Pawn Stars had one come in but they didn't buy it. Vid.

Friend has two of the old P/U's, not a chance he'd part with them for any amount of money. Or so he say's.

Phil

And Dodge claims they invented the minivan. ha

They should bring them back and make it a "smart"-bus.

My neighbor's girlfriend has one that they've been slowly fixing up. Her favorite uncle willed it to her. Been garaged, hardly any rust at all. Metallic pea, as the Griswald's would say.

owned a couple of them... I have a real soft spot for them, especially the pre 68 model...under powered as hell, they give a new meaning to slow...

when you are going up hill and a kid on a 10 speed bike is passing you kind of slow....

I love them IN SPITE of their popularity with dope smoking hippies...

Had a '74. God my wife hated that thing!!!!

I had a friend with one. He hated it for winter use. It had no heater and driving on slick roads in a wind was high risk for a slide off. The wind would catch the front end and bye bye.

My white '84 and dads '85 in front of a mountain range many will recognize..

just went and looked behind the barn


just some old windows, no van

damn the bad luck

oops found an old Porsche there!

let me know when they're bringing a comparable price please

Neighbor had a 71'ish 'Cuda behind his barn for years. Would not let me have it!

Came across one abandoned in a stream bed a few years back. Might have to see if it's still there, though would probably be a beotch to try and get it out.

Used to know a girl back in the day that drove a crew cab VW bus w/pickup bed. That was an odd looking vehicle.

Holy kshizzle! I drove one very much like that in high school, except the windshields didn't open. A '64 IIRC.

Jacked up with a FORTY HORSE motor instead of the original thirty six Never could get it to burn rubber, step on the gas and all it did was get louder, not faster. Seven or eight people in back and when you turned hard at speed the inside rear wheel would lift clear up off of the ground

But we was immortal back then.....

My college sweetheart and I had a couple. One burned up from the old setup with a fuel line being passed over the engine in the worst possible spot.

If you have one with that setup, move it so it goes around the outside.

i know a guy that has like 30 maybe more of the newer vw vans like the 84-85 pictured above.he's got a field full of them.i guess he thinks they will bring a fortune some day.

Wouldn't it be amazing if foresight were a common commodity?

In hindsight it seems so easy to envision that a common item, like ordinary guns in their time, would soar in value. What if somebody had said "Hey, lets not junk those P-51s, etc., they'll be worth six figures someday"? Or the bought-new 1966 Toyota Landcruiser I sold a few years later.

It seems so simple...

Paul

On the TV shows, the number of windows seem to be a big deal.

This one went for $198K a couple of years ago.

We always had one on the farm. It basically was our pickup. Had no idea it was underpowered, either. My dad would load it full of strawberries or plums, and then pull a trailer full to market at least once a week......

It was bright orange, too....

Lots of em here....3 in one yard and 4 in another.....an old hippie gal still drives hers.

Yeah they're all remembered with romance and wow-wow now. Personally after having to depend on a 1966(?) unit in the mid-70s I wouldn't give you a dime for a dozen if I had to use one. Always wanted to somehow get enough dynamite to blow that thing back to Hell where it came from. Absolutely couldn't fix it fast enough to stay ahead of the next breakdown. Ya'll can have em all.

Our main vehicle, the only one I can recall bought new, was a '69, by then they were squarer in profile with a one piece windshield..

We transported a good-sized pony in it once, had to take out the middle seat of course, put down a tarp and IIRC sawdust.

I learned to drive on those two VW microbuses Of course they were slow compared to most, but a teenage kid could still keep 'em floored and work through those four speeds so they could be scary fast at times

Birdwatcher

every VW buss I ever saw had a drum set in the back and Cheech and Chong smoke rolling out of all the windows.

I was focused on Beetle's in the 90's but certainly dreamed of a bus or pickup with a Porsche 2.7 out back.

If you really want a good laugh and eye opener, check the original retail price on some of the guns you're buying or already own. It's an education in real economics in itself.

Not the derivatives of the meltdown(s).

I hated driving VWs 50 years ago.

OTOH, I wish I had my Dad's old Crosley, Isetta, 52 yellow Willys Jeepster and several others that we drove when we were living rather frugally.

70 years of storage would take a big bite out of any value and would most likely leave you with a -, but sometimes nostalgia is priceless!


Phil

Anybody remember John Muir?

Author of the air cooled VW bible, I still have my copy.

Oh for a bit of foresight....Back in the 80's it would have been so easy to find several of these buses in good shape and put them in the barn under tarps. Now they'd be a big boost toward the retirement program.

Poor old Bussy...used and abused in their old age...

Of course that was not too far south of here in No Cal..

morons...

I thought the 2015 magpul poster was kinda cool. it has this van on it.

Forty years ago in my '64 microbus, bunch of people in the back, late on Saturday night in that era when driving drunk and minor in possession didn't have all the legal penalties they (rightfully) do today. Following some guy in a worked-over Chevelle to a party. The steering box was worn out so it actually weaved slightly side to side and needed constant corrections on the wheel (), hard right at a stoplight.

Hand over hand quick on that big flat wheel (how many turns was it lock to lock anyhow?), microbus leans outside at a crazy angle, inside rear wheel way unloaded, maybe off of the ground. Dim headlights sweep the windshield of a car waiting at the light, wide-eyed look of horror on the faces of said occupants clearly remembered.

It nearly died coming back from a trip up the Gaspe Peninsula along the St Lawrence after my freshman year at college, but got me safely back home before it did (on three cylinders at the end IIRC, and I had stretched the funds so far on that trip that the bridge toll coming back west across the Hudson near home woulda been a deal-breaker if they had charged east to west instead of just west to east ).

I cant imagine now why we sold it, looking back it actually worked like a champ on dirt tracks through the mountains crossing the Gaspe. To us at the time it was just an old and wore-out vehicle is all, I had nowhere to keep it at college, and my brother was already in to a new Datsun B210, plainly the next generation of vehicles. I think we needed the money for something else, disposable income being generally short.

My next vehicle was a rusted-out AMC Scout. No complaints except it was so rusted that the driver's side door lock fell clear out (the holes in the floor had been of minor import, folks was used to seeing the road through holes in the floorboards back then). Anyway, no worries on the door lock thing, I would just run my belt through the inside door arm rest and around my thigh to hold it closed ( ).

Then came the little '69 Opel Kadette wagon, my home for some months in New Mexico, before I left for Africa. We didn't expect cars to go 200,000 miles back then, not even 100,000, and took for a given the necessity for frequent wrenching on 'em merely to keep 'em running. But they were simpler machines back then, and easily wrenched on.

Birdwatcher