For The Love of a VW Bus

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted a VW bus. I think my love for them began before I could even drive. Back then I was really getting into the Grateful Dead. I hadn’t seen them yet, but I listened to them religiously. I had books and I studied their history. On the weekends we’d go to the record shop at the mall and I’d always leave with at least one CD of theirs. And one thing I consistently saw in pictures of Dead Heads and the parking lots at the shows was VW bus after VW bus. They looked so cool. Little bread loaf houses on wheels that followed this band around the country carrying these long-haired nomads from city to city.

Once I got my license and started cruising the streets of Fayetteville with my friends, there was a group of our friends who all had VW somethings. A few of them had buses. One or two had Beatles. And one group of brothers had a amazing bright yellow VW Thing. I was so jealous! When I got to NC State and became a brother at Sigma Nu, there were a few of the brothers who had VW buses. And just like back home, I was crazy jealous of those guys. I wanted a bus too. Where was my VW bus? It had been well over a decade. I’d pay my dues.

And then the working years came. Bills. Responsibilities. Grown up shit. This isn’t to say my dream had died. It was still there. I still looked for buses online. I still stopped at every single bus I saw parked in someone’s yard or at some business. I still wrote down the number. I still called to inquire. But nothing happened. And every bus I saw on the road would cause me to slow down, to stare, to point and honk and give the thumbs up. The dream never died.

There was a consistency in the buses I saw online and on the road. They were all Westfalias. They were all mid-70s and 80s buses. They were all beautiful with the pop-up Westfalia tops and the camping setups inside. Those style buses are are more squared off in the front. A lot of them have the spare tire on the front. They have the sliding side door, like the modern minivans. And they are definitely the kind of bus I had dreamed about. But there was another us that was my white whale. The rarest of the rare. The bus you literally NEVER saw in public. The infamous split window.

The VW split window pre-dates the Westfalias that I’d grown up seeing. These rare gems were from the 60s and early 70s. And from what I know there were two types. One was a 21 window and the other was a 23 window. The difference was the back two windows on a 21 window were panels instead of windows. The bus in the picture above is a 21 window and you can see the panel in the vey back of the bus. I lean a little towards the 23 window simply because there is more visibility for what’s behind you when the entire back of your bus is windows. But that really is a very minor detail. They both are absolutely beautiful, magical vehicles.

I have never been up close to a split window. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one on the road before. A few years ago there was an amazing looking split window at a used car dealership on Capital Blvd that had a garage that must have done some vintage restorations. I drove past that dealership after taking the kids to preschool and I always would slow down when I was passing. I wanted to stop and look, and by the time I had decided to, it was gone. And that’s the only one I can recall ever seeing. They were just that rare.

So my dreams of VW buses were always steered towards Westfalias. But recently I came across a restoration company in Houston that seems to specialize in split windows. When I found the website completely by chance, I saw they had 6 or 7 split windows for sale. And all of them were immaculate. I had never seen such a meticulously restored bus on any site ever. They were absolutely perfect. Every single thing that could be touched on those buses had been restored. I reached out to the company and learned that everything that could be new on the buses was new. Brakes, electrical, transmission, engine, tires, interior. Like I said, they were perfect. And in doing a ton of research, they were actually priced very reasonably. Because of the absolute rarity of these split windows, they came with a hefty price tag. And obviously, the more work done, the higher the price tag. But these beauties were not priced too high. On the contrary, they were priced on the lower end.

I’m sure you can imagine my reaction to finding a company that specializes in the very car I’ve dreamed of for 30 years now. Let’s just say, I’m obsessed! Let’s just say I’m completely consumed. I go to the site every day and look at the pictures I’ve already seen hundreds of times. When I’m running my Fedex route around Brier Creek, I daydream of driving my bus around town. I daydream of loading the kids up and heading down to Wilmington. I daydream of all the heads turning as they see such an amazing, rare, pristine bus cruising down the road. At night, I have my typical weird dreams, but now they also include a split window. I tell you friends, I’m obsessed.

But why in the world would anyone want to drive something that old? There is no air conditioning. There is very little heat. No radio. Not a single modern luxury that we now take for granted in our cars. I can’t really answer that question. I can say that these things really don’t concern me that much. I mean, I’m not crazy. You give me some modern whatever with Apple Play, heated seats, horsepower and other bells and whistles, and I’m going to enjoy my drive just fine. But I really don’t give a shit about them. I’m not a car guy. I appreciate the nice ones I see on the road. But then they drive off and I quickly forget they were ever there. But the VW bus. I don’t know. Maybe it keeps me feeling young. Maybe it keeps the dreams I had as a teenager alive. Maybe its some kind of mid-life crisis thing. I don’t know. It’s a dream that’s been there for a long, long time. It’s something I’ve longed for from a young age. It’s something that isn’t going away and seems to be getting stronger lately. And it seems that for the foreseeable future, it’s something that will remain just out of reach...