Volkswagen started selling Vans in United States in the early 1950sand sales continue for three generations and beyond model year 1991. There are those who will tell you that VW Transporters are currently too sought after by enthusiasts to ever appear in them gigantic self-service car cemeteries that I often visitBut are incorrect. Last year we saw the second generation Transporter at a shipyard in Colorado, and now here it is: third generation model currently inhabited facility in South Carolina.
The T3 Transporter first appeared in the United States as a 1980 model and wore the Vanagon badge. The name was a combination of the words “van” and “wagon” that stubbornly accompanied the VW brand for decades presenting their vans as station wagons (Honestly, Detroit it did the same with its delivery trucks). When Toyota tried to sell an Americanized version MasterAce Surf with “Van Wagon” badges from 1984, Volkswagen lawyers forced them to change their name to simply Toyota Van.
Gasoline-powered Vanagons had air-cooled engines until 1983 (49-horsepower water-cooled diesels were available in Vanagons in 1982 and 1983), but we can see a radiator in the snout of this van. What is it about?
The build tag says life has begun in Hanover, West Germany as a 1982 model with a 2.0-litre petrol burner, so it had to have one Wasserboxer replace later. I saw A 1981 Vanagon with a similar swap in Colorado a few months ago.
Before I arrived, the engine had been taken from the scrapyard by a customer.
Unusually, this van has an optional automatic transmission. The water-cooled VW engines were most likely swapped for this van, with power well under 100 horsepower and a curb weight of close to 3,100 pounds, so this machine would be very, Very accelerate slowly.
Jim Hudson is still sells fresh cars in Colombiaalthough currently they are not Volkswagens.
It turns out that the Vanagon has the same wheel bolt design as the Mercedes-Benz W123. Only one of these wheels is fitted, but it looks cold.
It’s not rusty, and the interior probably wasn’t that bad in its condition before it arrived at the scrapyard, but the cost of restoring one of these vans can be prohibitive.
Basically a European luxury car. You’d want to avoid hills in a diesel Vanagon with a load of seven passengers.
In the Vanagon, performance was the most crucial thing.
The van room. Comfort of the station wagon. This ad makes a clever joke about Detroit’s recently downsized train cars.
