I usually don’t pay much attention to VW Transporters in the junkyard, but I have a friend with a Vanagon (he’s an industrial designer and decided that this VW— which I believe to be one of the worst motor vehicles ever built— says positive things about his sense of style and appreciation of good design) who needed a bunch of parts for his hopeless project van. So, when I found this ’83 at a Denver self-service wrecking yard, I grabbed a few bits and took some photos. (Read More…)
Posted in Down On The Junkyard
Tagged as 1980s, 1983, 1983 Volkswagen Vanagon, Custom Van, Denver, Down On The Junkyard, Grateful Dead, hippie bus, junkyard, Junkyard Find, Malaise, Malaise Era, Van, Vanagon, Volkswagen, Volkswagen Bus, Volkswagen Vanagon
Tagged as 1980s, 1983, 1983 Volkswagen Vanagon, Custom Van, Denver, Down On The Junkyard, Grateful Dead, hippie bus, junkyard, Junkyard Find, Malaise, Malaise Era, Van, Vanagon, Volkswagen, Volkswagen Bus, Volkswagen Vanagon
I’m now experiencing my second winter as an ex-Californian in Denver, and I feel as though I’ve been adjusting pretty well— got an Outback in the garage and everything. However, there’s one big automotive mystery here, and that’s the incomprehensible love many otherwise sensible Coloradans have for the Volkswagen Vanagon Syncro. At the risk of enraging the Vanagon Jihad, I have to say that the only way Volkswagen could have made the fragile-at-best Vanagon even less reliable was to give it four-wheel-drive. And yet I see these things being used as very costly daily drivers all the time.
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