Here’s a nifty ’60 VW single-cab pickup parked last week in front of a pop-up junque shop in the high street of Nelson, BC. The guy in the shop asked if I’m a vintage VW fan—he’d seen me taking pictures—and I said no (‘cos I’m not, though I had a real thing for the Herbie movies when I was in third grade) but I appreciate unusual old vehicles in good condition.
There’s a lot to like about this one. It’s clean, straight, thoughtfully outfitted, and appears to my uneducated eye substantially original (the original front indicator lenses were probably colourless; vehicle front turn signals in North America went from white to amber for ’63). Probably sounds nifty starting and driving around, too.
What about the lack o’ lacquer, though? Why isn’t this truck a little pile of reddish-brown dust? Come to find out the owner rubs it down with gun oil every two weeks. I guess that does it, because there it is; see for yourself!
I have a set of lovely new-in-box old era-correct European replaceable-bulb headlamp units for it, but I hadn’t them with me, so our shop finds had to be paid in money.
And now for some context of how these early VW trucks and buses compared to the overwhelmingly dominant domestic makers’ offerings in the United States; here’s a vintage review from the October 1958 issue of “Science and Mechanics”, a lesser-known competitor to the likes of “Popular Mechanics” and “Popular Science”. S&M’s road tests included unusually extensive and detailed specifications, figures, and test results. The author, brimming with the casual sexism of the day, has a bit of a temper tantrum about the ascent of the automatic transmission, but all in all it’s a piece worth reading; click the magazine cover and a PDF of the article opens in a new tab.
(My father had this magazine—he’d’ve been 16 when it hit the newsstands, and bought it for its project articles—and it survived long enough for me to read it as a gradeschooler: “Mom, what does ‘mit der’ mean? Why does this say ‘make mit der engine revolutions’?”. But it was pretty well worn out by the time I lost it. Awhile back I took a notion to replace it, which wouldn’t’ve taken long on eBay but I’d forgot what issue of which lesser-known title I was seeking, so I had to be vague with my keywords and sift through a bunch of chaff before the wheat eventually revealed itself.)
A good friends dad was the VW distributor in Oregon during the 50’s. They had a large family, and loved taking long road trips. The result was some really long memories in the back of a Deluxe Bus counting potholes on long uphill grades. I was also told his dad invented cruise control- in the form of a brick, which he kept close to the driver’s seat.
Great find…last time we went through Nelson this tank was parked at our hotel for a few days! Saskatchewan plates too!
This is the first time I have heard of an oil finish on something other than wood. Prep will be a bitch if anyone ever wants to paint it.
Aircraft stripper will make quick work of it, providing it’s completely taken apart first so it can work in the part lines.
I kinda like this look… better at least than the brief (and hopefully fading) trend of drenching everything in Muriatic Acid and then clearcoating the resulting rust layer.
I had a 1971 VW Bus in 1976. This was in Connecticut where it had seen rough winters. Let me say that these buses can turn to piles of rust right before your eyes if you don’t take good care of the painted (and unpainted) surfaces.
I love VW Buses and I will agree. They are built to rust.
Yeah a friend has 66 split window van suffering from termites he keeps threatening to sell it after his beetle is completed and sold and get out of VWs altogether, but he loves classics and has had the van some 15 years, hoping he repairs it.
My grandmother said my blood cells are shaped like tiny Beetles and Buses running through my veins like highways. It’s a hopeless addiction for me.
Nice find its solid for its age and looks ok in bare metal, the amount of prep work required to get a roughie like that to look good painted would stagger you, theres not a straight panel on it.
With the engineering involved in developing this vehicle and VW was too cheap to install roll-up windows!
I never understood why VW resorted to this, even in their vans.
I don’t care about how much gun oil is required to keep this in one piece – it looks terrible – but then I am not a VW fan, even admitting they have a certain charm to many.
Being inexpensive was the whole point. Plus, when the Type2 was being developed in the late 40’s, VW was far from the major company it became. It was still working in a factory patched up from WWII bombing. The fact that they developed such a useful utlitarian vehicle at that time is remarkable.
That being said, as an owner of one, I like the sliding windows. It’s kind of different.
Sliding windows wasnt such an uncommon thing in cars when VW came up with this thing, many cars were fitted thus not US cars but many others.
I remember by uncle’s 1957 Ford 2 door station wagon had sliding windows in the back seat. It was also the first car I remember with seat belts, but he was an aeronautical engineer, so he probably got them from an airplane.
Considering the shape of the doors, there may not have been room in them for the window to roll down.
Nice find Daniel. I like its bare finish. This one below does the rounds near me; still LHD and owned by a tradie who daily drives it for work. It’s immaculate, but he now has plans to restomod it. Not my taste, but not my car.
I just got the rear suspension upgrade all together on my ’63 Standard Microbus and the rear brakes squared away this weekend. It felt great to drive it again.
Loved that thorough review. And what detailed technical specs; I think that’s the most extensive ones I’ve ever seen in a review.
The review was well done too, really putting the practical aspects of it in perspective. And no, they didn’t just moan and groan about the very modest acceleration and top speed. Given that this was in the mostly pre-freeway era, a top speed of 58 was doable.
The VW bus and pickup were enjoying a big surge in popularity at this time. So big, that GM and Ford were rather alarmed at its success, and were very busy at this time developing their own compact vans.
When I spent part of the summer of 1970 back in Iowa City, I spent quite a bit of time riding in the back of one just like this, still with its 1200cc stock engine. Yes, it was slow, but who cared? I was a rolling party on wheels, and we were in no particular hurry. It actually fit the relaxed Midwest summer speed of life quite well.
When I lived in Eugene in the mid-’90s while attending UO, there were quite a few Microbuses still around. They were mostly mid-late ’70s items, seemingly factory-equipped with the “I may be slow…but I’m in front of you!” bumper sticker. But there were a few oldies. My next-door neighbor had an absolutely sanitary sage-green ’66, a very well equipped and original European camper-type model. I don’t recall a lot of detail, but I remember it was originally from the Netherlands, and I think it had a high and/or extensible roof, cookstove, sleeping rack of some kind, and other such provisions. But mostly I remember the European headlamps and 2-colour rear lamps, because of course I do. I hope it’s still in good shape and well loved; it was a real beauty.
Great article, Mr Stern, and well-remembered by you. I always end up forgetting where the damn info I want is located. (The ute in the photos is not for me. I always have a resistant reaction to anything that might be affectation, though I hasten to add the thing is far from awful, and the photos very good).
So much familiarity here, some stuff quite forgotten. We had one when I was a kid. (I may possibly have mentioned this in passing, briefly, maybe once, here before). Slick gearbox with a springy, unwilling reverse. Very good brakes (especially as they are my enemy, the evil Drum). Racketty engine and box, or boxes, as those reduction boxes (just to ensure a REAL high swing point) moaned like washing machines as speed rose. 9 inches off the ground, so that my little short-legged mum resembled a kid coming down a slide on getting out, or a tree-clambering child on mounting up.
Wow, 40mph round a tight-ish circle was brave. Not much lean is quite true: I always felt beyond a certain speed it’d just fall over. Indeed, one of my sisters tried more than 35, admittedly on a right angle, while learner-driving, and it defied physics to come back down off the two skyward wheels. Appalling and slow wipers. Slow progress on open road, especially with an over-taxed father who obeyed that 50mph limit by being largely below it. Fascinating their bus only got 20 mpg, too much use of 3,750 revs and more by the ruthless conductor I reckon. Huge practicality, traffic zippiness, removeable seats (though I’d hardly call the wing-nutted thingies holding them in “secure” – the wagons they talk of must have been using gum).
Don’t see a lot of reference to adequacy of hatroom these days. It was good, too, though eventually our headlining drooped to meet even the hatless.
What detailed data the one eyebrow raisingly-named Don Dinwiddie (did ‘e?) has included. I’m most intrigued by the effective length of top gear, particularly for a workhorse van. Plenty of small cars had less.
As for quality, they were, they are, the classic depends. Brand spanking, I’m sure they were nice. But ours was, in a benign climate, Swiss-cheesy and very breezy at ten years old. It resisted water ingress with the might of a sieve. The door in the middle would give us unwanted publicity when it flew open over bumps, leading to an elastic band between its handle and the other door’s on such trips, or a youngest delegated to hold it on some false sibling promise of candy (which such youngest may or may not have been me). The heater didn’t. The seats had springs that were half way to freedom. The quality lasts long after the price is forgotten; well, I suppose they weren’t too pricey new (in the US anyway).
A question. Is getting just 64% of power to the wheels rather a large loss in transmission?
Ugh. I really hate what was done to this poor defenseless T1. Why had this to be? Is the owner some kind of sadist? I’d love to rescue this poor little thing and give it back some of its original dignity.
First of all, of course, the way too low suspension has to be corrected asap. These VWs were meant to be high, so let them be high! I never understood the trend to lower them to such a ridiculous degree, this utterly destroys the original harmonious proportions and makes them look like some silly kind of sled. If a sled is what you want, then just go and buy a sled: don’t cruelly amputate an innocent old VW.
Next, of course it needs a proper paint job. This paintless look is just a form of needless, silly affectation. I would clean and paint it right away, to restore some if its original dignity. Not necessarily high-gloss lacquer, but at least some paint: that what’s the poor thing is crying out for. Would I send a little, tender child out into the cold all nude, covered in vaseline instead of a proper coat? There you have it.
Furthermore, there are many f*ed-up details that look so ridiculous and out-of-place (like the headlights that reminded me of a hairnet on the head of the aforementioned nude child) that I would go to work immediately to restore all kinds of little things to a somewhat more original state.
In short, this abusive VW owner should consider himself lucky that I recently resigned from the FBI CCPT (Classic Car Protection Team). If I still was in office today, I would have thrown him in jail for malicious maltreatment.
Well, as much as this look is not my thing, they are currently fashionable and valid VW choices, so we shouldn’t be too indelicately critical. If a future owner is motivated enough this can all be reversed.
If you truly want to have an effect then buy one and preserve it in a more original state. That’s what I did with my 63 Beetle. No mods, no accessories.
Nice commentary! I built this Bulli and when it started you have to understand what it was : scrap in a junkyard. Even the rear frame had been cutout . There was so much Body filler all over it it was sickening ( 45-50 lbs) when I finally had it all stripped and it was time to replace and straighten all the hacked and stretched panels i stood back and fell in love with the original German metal so i straightened everything to the look i wanted and rubbed it down in Gibbs oil which can be easily removed with wax and grease remover. It had no running gear so I did beetle rear suspension which is sitting at its highest adjustment and I installed a new beam upfront with reversed spindles to match the rear. The undercarriage is completely new and sealed in black 3x undercarriage paint . The engine is all new reproduction components ( nothing used or rebuilt) 2017cc and the transmission is a pro street 4:12 geared 4spd so it can drive down the highway all day in comfort. Brakes are modern Volkswagen disc brakes with a dual circuit master cylinder and an entire new wiring harness. The bench seat was hand sewn saddle leather . The most important detail is it was all built in my 20×20 garage by me , everything top to bottom. It was not in it’s rusted form as it is now but that’s the look the new owner wanted. My focus during the build was to not permanently modify anything. As for the headlights, they are original euro headlights and the shields were put on after loosing one to a rock during one of the many cruises all over Alberta BC and Washington ( well over 10,000 miles) . That’s the rest of the story!
Well, howdy there! I just saw this comment you posted, some five months after you posted it. Wow, so this is your work, eh? Beautifully done. Just really lovely craftsmanship.
I will have to keep quibbling with you about the headlamps, though. They are not European lamps, they’re the US assembly containing a 7″ round sealed beam, a parking light in front of that (which the owner has unwisely replaced with a fraudulent “LED bulb”) and a clear glass cover lens in front of that. The European assembly had a reflector with a replaceable bulb (a 45/40w non-halogen R2), a parking light bulb in front of that, and a cover lens with optics to form the beam patterns.
Perhaps it had European lamps when it left your shop and the owner subsequently swapped in the North American parts for whatever reason. Anyhow, it’s really a grand piece of work and it surely brought a smile.
Probably shouldn’t be all that surprised by casually sexist article copy in S&M magazine.
There is that, isn’t there!