I’ll Never Get Tired Of Driving Old VW Microbuses And You’ll Never Guess What Car Is Less Aerodynamic Than The Bus

In the last episode of Torch Drives I drove a pretty obscure weird, underpowered car, and it was a blast. This time, the car is pretty much the opposite of obscure. It’s not necessarily a common sight on modern roads, but it’s one of that small set of cars that have transcended their initial roles to become something truly iconic. The Volkswagen Type 2 Transporter, called variously a Bus, Hippy Bus, Microbus, Station Wagon (yep), Clipper (yep again), Bulli, VW Van, or whatever is one of those cars that almost anyone can identify, whether they give a brace of BMs about cars or not. It’s not like the story of this car hasn’t been told a million times before, but you know what? It’s still a good story. And old VW buses are still a blast to drive and just be in, not feeling quite like anything else on the road, their own peculiar, idiosyncratic thing. So, when Volkswagen offered me a few hours with their lovely ’67 21-window Bus, of course I leapt at it, smacked into the side, and then thanked them and grabbed the keys.

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There’s a lot of interesting details about the origin story of the Type 2. We all know the story about how Ben Pon, VW’s Dutch importer, saw the little plattenwagen factory runabout truck-things that were crudely built by factory workers, and how that humble but useful machine inspired him to draw his famous sketch of that other humble but useful machine, a machine that was desperately needed in postwar Europe to get economy going again by moving stuff around, which, as any economist will tell you, is the backbone of any economy.

What’s less noted is that, really, the Bus was the first actual Volkswagen. Now, settle down, I know the Beetle came first, but the Beetle started life as the KdF-Wagen, part of one of the Third Reich’s all-too-rare non-horrific genocidal plans. The Beetle wasn’t born a Volkswagen as we know the company today, but was adopted into the family after the war, after the British control of the Wolfsburg factory, when the modern Volkswagen company was born.

The Bus, on the other hand, was the first project to be undertaken by the new postwar Volkswagen, and when it came out in 1950, it was the first vehicle to be developed by the Volkswagen that we know today.

You know what else is fascinating about the early development of the Bus? Despite everything your eyes tell you, VW actually paid attention to aerodynamics. The first prototypes of the Type 2, known then as Type 29, were really crude and angular, with no curvature at all to the cab:

VW took their prototype the wind tunnel at the nearby University of Braunschweig, where I presume the wind tunnel was used to extensively test the aero qualities of liverwurst, and were informed that the aerodynamics of the Type 2 were terrible, just terrible. Like, unusable, especially considering the engine they had to use at the time was the 1100cc 25 hp unit from the Beetle. Something had to get fixed, so the clever Braunschweigers and VW’s people re-designed the Bus into something a bit more rounded and wind-friendly while still retaining the spaciousness of a box on wheels.

The result was a drag ratio of about 0.42 Cd (that may be for the later “bay window” version, but it’s close enough for my point here) which is shockingly good (I mean, all things considered) and a reminder that aerodynamics is hard and not at all obvious, because the sleek, sporty, low Jaguar E-Type has a Cd of 0.44! That’s worse! How is that possible?

There’s lots of interesting details about the Microbus, and I hope the genuine delight I feel driving one of these things comes across in the video, because it’s genuine. Sure, it’s absurd Boomer nostalgia that has driven prices of these up to the point of inaccessibility for most of us, and that’s lousy, but it’s worth taking a moment and revisiting the old Bus to get a reminder of why these things became icons. It’s one of those cases where a singular focus on a job to be done, an unrelenting lock on utility somehow transformed into charm and character, unplanned and unbidden but desperately real.

Oh, and forgive me if the end feels a little like an endorsement for the new ID.Buzz. I like the ID.Buzz and I meant what I said, but we were late returning the Microbus and VW’s people were right there, so I wanted to, you know, give them a little something. Take it for what you will.

Another thing to consider about the Bus; in many ways, it was the lone successful example of a concept of a “futuristic car” from the 1930s or so. Cars like the Stout Scarab or Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion car were all about one-box designs with rear engines and a lot of often-flexible space. The first company to really realize this general concept was Volkswagen, with the Type 2, even if it was done for simple space-utilization and utilitarian reasons instead of noble utopian goals.

We take them for granted now, but the VW Bus absolutely earned its iconic status. The next time you see one puttering around, try to look at it with fresh eyes. That shouldn’t be too hard to do, since it likely won’t be going all that fast.

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