The luxury Bus
(Now Sold)

How I got this bus:

March 21, 1998 7 p.m., I got my new luxury bus home. How that came about is in the story below.

In early 1998 a German 'Type 2' listmember sent a message about his 'dream bus'. It's a 1978 eight seater, 2 litre automatic. First owner Volkswagen AG, Wolfsburg! Original license number WOB-SP 19. You can see the registration on the "Fahrzeugbrief". One other owner (for 18 years) and then me! How about that?
The German gentleman had recently acquired this bus. Sadly for him he had to decide to sell it again. I had already told him that if he ever wanted to sell this bus he should let me know. So he did and I undertook a Sunday afternoon trip to Cologne to have a look at it. We closed the deal quickly, so ... the next step was to get this bus to Holland.

This is easier said than done. The bus had no valid registration so it could not be legally driven in Germany. Furthermore to get it registered in Holland one has to go through the whole bureaucracy, customs, approval, registration etc. That will easily take 3 to 6 weeks even if everything is OK.

So, in order to get this new bus to Holland I rented trailer and put it behind my poor 50 hp diesel Vanagon and started on the 150 miles trip to Cologne. The Vanagon is way underpowered as it is and I was a little scared that it would not be able to cope with a load of about 3000 pounds on the trailer.
After a while I pulled into a parking lot next to the Autobahn to see if the trailer was still there. Mind you I had never even driven with any type of trailer before. Well, it was still there, but there were also lots of oil stains on the rear bumper and at the front of the trailer.
Big scare ... was I blowing up my engine? I looked under the car and checked the oil level but could not really find much wrong. The level was at the top mark. No alarming amount of oil underneath. Maybe I overfilled the oil when I topped it up that morning? It does not really consume any serious amounts of oil (about 0.5 litre per 5000 Km).

I had about a quarter litre left in a bottle which I had put into the engine that morning, just to be on the safe side. Was that a mistake?I guess it had not really needed the oil and blew it out. I wiped off most of the oil from the trailer so I could see if it continued to spill oil. After those first 100 Kms I did not notice any new drops of oil so I guess that was the problem (Note: a couple of weeks later the engine started to loose coolant.  Upon investigation it turned out that the PO had performed a strange sort of 'oil bypass operation' on the block, it had a blown head gasket and a cracked head. This engine was beyond (economical) repair. I now have a (factory) brand new engine in this bus). 

After arriving in Cologne some DM's were exchanged and the car loaded onto the trailer. Back to Holland. On the level rural road I quickly got up to about 70 Km/h, that was promising.

However the first part of the autobahn is a bit hilly and I had to crawl uphill at speeds of barely 30Mph. Downhill it easily got upto 60 Mph!The whole combination felt quite stable. I guess the weight of my Vanagon and its wide tires are adequate for hauling this load. The power output of it's tiny diesel engine is the problem.
After I got out of the hilly part, the rest of the trip was quite pleasant and uneventful. It took me about 3 hours to cover the 150 Miles. Back in Holland I first had to show the new bus to my daughter. Eight seats! Wow, that means that it can be used to haul a big crowd of little ones to Mac Donald's!

I explained to my daughter that this bus has got a whopping 70 hp, an automatic transmission and lots of other goodies.

She was not impressed, she really wanted to get back into the house because she was going to have French fries.
Finally home.

I had arranged with the local VW dealer to give this bus a full checkup in order to see if there could be any problems getting it approved and registered. So there it is now. I parked it right in front of the showroom!

It's a bit of a contrast with all the new shiny Volkeses and Audi's. Although, put it next to a new Beetle and it would make a very nice picture.

BTW. I noticed that they had already driven it first thing Monday morning!
Look at this! It's got the original factory installed Blaupunkt radio. Great.... Although a new radio also has it's charms, I don't expect the quality of the 20 year old Blaupunkt is as high as of today's radio's. CD's were not even invented then. I hope the auto-tranny is in good shape. I did not even know VW had this as an available option back in those days.

The back of the bus looked a bit rough, but it's all there. The benches, eight head rests, the lot. Hardly any rips or damage. After cleaning and putting the middle bench back on its fees it looks nearly perfect. Note: The bus has been  approved (RDW / APK). It has all the necessary paperwork and has brand new license plates. So it is street legal.

Current Status:

Summer 20000. After I got this bus I was not sure about what to do with it. After acquiring the '69 Clipper the 'brown bus' was more or less redundant. After giving it much consideration I sold this bus.

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