I think I have a complicated relationship with the Volkswagen ID.Buzz. This was a vehicle I was very much looking forward to existing in the world, and one I desperately wanted to like – and, in many ways, I do like it. But it’s a vehicle that has a pretty significant Achilles’ heel, one that I believe severely impairs its fundamental purpose: its relatively low range. When I tested it, I was frustrated to find what a fantastic road trip machine it was – if you could somehow ignore the real-world, road trip range of about 150 miles or so. But you can’t ignore that, so it was frustrating. But I happened to see a variant of the ID.Buzz, a variant that somehow feels a bit closer in character to the original, and seems to be better suited to its raison d’etre, technically.
The variant? The cargo version.
And even more so, the absolute base-model cargo version, the one that forgoes most of the passenger variant’s trim and luxurious touches, down to having unpainted black bumpers, front and rear. These don’t yet exist in America, but I saw one on ex-Twitter:
panel van id buzz, unpainted bumpers and everything pic.twitter.com/6GF7t3K1Go
— Alex P (@blueRSavant) March 26, 2025
Seeing that, I felt things. Something about the ID.Buzz stripped down to its barest essentials just made the whole thing feel right again, feel closer to its roots as, well, a useful box on wheels. Because that’s all a VW Type 2 was really ever meant to be. Look at these old ads for cargo Type 2s, for reference:
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The cargo version of the ID.Buzz I think strips down quite well, which speaks well to its fundamental design:
I especially like seeing it in steelies, and even more especially those steelies, because the many-little-round-holes design is pretty much just like what Buses from the ’70s used:
I like seeing the black filler panel between the taillights, replacing the full-width LED heckblende of the passenger version. I like the black hinges, the now-empty horizontal recesses in the rear upper quarter that are normally filled with plastic trim bits, like you see here:
I think look great just as stamped recesses, freed from any excess of design. I think it all just works.
And, in the context of a delivery van, the ID.Buzz is extremely well-suited to the job. The range is really not an issue in this context, as delivery speeds the sort of stop-and-start demands of a delivery van are ideal for maximizing battery range. An electric delivery van is an ideal use of such a platform: quiet, no exhaust or noise or fuel use while stopped, because there’s no idling, good acceleration for dealing with traffic, excellent packaging so you have a big, empty box to load full of stuff – it’s just an ideal platform for the job.
Also, look, three-across seating up front for the cargo version – this should be an option for the passenger ones!
The price for the de-contented delivery vehicle is a good bit less than the passenger ones, of course, and that helps a great deal, too. The price drop is significant – for example, you can get a Buzz cargo for about $53,000 – still not nearly as cheap as I’d like to see, of course, but a lot better than the average passenger ID.Buzz prices of $60 to over $70,000.
I’m still a bit disappointed with the ID.Buzz, a machine that probably is judged unfairly, when it comes to living up to the reputation and legacy of its ancestor. But seeing this cargo variant does make me rethink some things, and feel a little better about what still is, after all these years, a useful box on wheels.
Hey Torch, does it really matter? We got crazy people out there torching private individuals vehicles and charging facilities. It doesn’t just affect Tesla owners who might have bought it before Elon decides to change his party it is okay to burn their vehicle. It is also okay to torch charging facilities for Ford, Chevrolet and many other vehicles that have nothing to do with the political toxic view of some people. Maybe someone could explain Musk only owns 12.5% of Tesla people who bought Tesla vehicles to help the environment shouldn’t have their vehicle damaged. And we need people to start behaving sane or check themselves in to a psychiatrist unit
I ain’t gonna read all that, One sentence in and I was like, “fuck dem fuckers.”
Umm, you do know that this is about the ID.Buzz, right? No need to go on about something that you are passionate about but that has nothing to do with this article.
It’s a recent focus of right wing news sources.
This isn’t about Tesla at all. Why are you going on about that?
You sound upset about things that are utterly unrelated to this article.
Maybe you need a little lie down. And turn off the right-wing cable TV news. It’s just agitating you. Go outside, feed some ducks. You’ll feel better.
Wait Jason likes a cheaper, stripped out, base model????? Never saw that coming…
Visibility out of a panel van is horrendous and no amount of mirrors will solve that.
I’ve been driving a cargo van for 12 years. I got used to limited visibility after a few months. A rearview camera helps a lot.
90% of my driving is in a work van, You get used to it. No judgment here, just everyone is different.
Always back in, stay in the right lane, double double check when you turn
I was surprised to experience that a cargo Sprinter with 360 degree cameras is the easiest thing to park. You know exactly where the corners and tires are.
To pipe in with the site’s kool aid theme, for these I do feel like a short wheelbase passenger one with a 100 mile battery and range extender in the back would really hit the mark, maybe when Scout gets going they’ll look at options like that for the Buzz.
I saw an actual ID.Buzz for the first time a few days ago, on a car carrier. It’s smaller than I thought; about the same length as the Sonata directly under it.
Torch, I saw an orange-and-white ID.Buzz tooling around RTP a couple days ago. The first I’ve seen in the wild around here.
I think that was the one I saw as well, but way before RTP.
The Dutch postal service uses these, we saw quite a few last summer when we were over there.
It’d be great if we could ever get it here, but thanks to LBJ’s massive government overreach in slapping a gargantuan tax on commercial vehicles(i.e. the Chicken Tax) I just don’t see that happening. This one doesn’t look readily convertible from cargo to passenger and back again to avoid it.
I’m so used to current political vitriol that it took me a minute to see you were blaming Johnson. I thought Lets Go Brandon? Biden? Trump? Obama? LeBron James?
Ohhhhh the Chicken Tax actual LBJ.
Sorry for the confsion. I’m old enough to have several friends that served in the military during the Vietnam conflict so we talk about him and his insane dictatorial crap on the regular. Especially in the current climate with the petulant children that are trying to control peoples’ lives.
They’ll never sell this in the US. Despite seeing a ton of Transit Connects and their ilk, the only one still for sale new is the NV200. My wife needed a cargo van for her business last year and we got a leftover 2023 Transit Connect because they don’t sell them anymore and the new gen is a rebadged VW in Europe and Mexico. Chevy sold a rebadged Nissan about 10 years ago, Dodge quit selling the ProMaster City in 2022.
I can only imagine that they want you to buy the more revenue friendly big vans instead, but it sucks. I literally see 10-15+ small vans in this class every day but apparently no one buys them?
I know a guy who is making a business out of repairing Transit Connects for resale for the exact reason that no similar vehicles are available new and they are perfect for so many businesses.
Ford is still considering making a Maverick-based small van for the US. Not sure how those plans will go with tariffs, as the van was to be assembled in Mexico, but a small-hybrid van would be neat (or even an ecoboost 2.0 one!)
I suspect demand for the small vans was somewhat cyclical, with fleets leasing/purchasing on a fixed schedule. Looking at sales for the Transit Connect, you can see a demand spike in 2015, ~4 years from introduction, and again in 2019. We should have seen another wave by now, but the chip shortage likely put plans for a ‘third gen’ on hold.
We know Ford had intentions to produce a van in Mexico alongside the Escape, Maverick & Bronco Sport.
I bet that design has been production-ready for years, but with those models each selling 3-4x the volume of the Transit Connect, it shouldn’t be a surprise they were favoured during a time of limited capacity.
Now that production has finally caught up, we have the tariff situation to contend with. Still, I think we’ll see the new van from Ford pretty soon. As you said, there are a lot of small vans on the road and they aren’t getting any younger. They need to get a replacement out before they lose those fleet sales to stripped out Kia Carnivals.
It also sort of filled in as a cheap utilitarian fleet offering in lieu of pickups, at least at Ford. The Transit Connect went on sale as the old 3rd gen Ranger was leaving production, and left after the Maverick arrived and was climbing in sales. Different form factors of course, but there’s surely some fleet buyers that weren’t as concerned with the van bodystyle or a cap on the small bed achieves the same basic need. Internet installers are one that comes to mind where I’ve seen both the small cargo vans and smaller pickups like Mavericks in use.
I like the cargo version, but I’m not getting one until there’s a dedicated Volkswagen section of whatever permutation of the J.C. Whitney Catalog remains extant these days, so I can get a heart-shaped Lolita bubble window for each side.
I saw a few of these tooling around the UK when I was there last week for work, and I’ll admit, they did make me think “what if I could get one of those to schlepp things around?”
Schlepping has become one of my go-to hobbies as I age.
I’m severely digging the Y2K acid green paint. It’s nice to see colors other than Boredom, Ennui and Metal Flake Seasonal Depression.
What a great description of todays colors
Two-tone Regret and Eternal Pessimism are also standard paint jobs.
German Leasing Silver, Oops-We-Cleared-The-Primer Gray…
The original VW Type 2 Microbus was iconic. This… is a refrigerator with wheels. Another anonymous White Goods As Vehicle… vehicle. It is An Minivan. If beige was a Dodge Grand Caravan, it would be a Volkswagen ID.Buzz.
I actually kind of want to try to drive a VW Bus, one of the original ones from the 1960s. (I’m disabled and vehicle controls for me are… not a deal-with-able thing, generally. It’s physiological. I’ve talked about it here before.) This… thing?
Honestly, the fact that it is so faceless and generic, simply by itself, makes the ID.Buzz noteworthy — because of how much of a polar opposite that is from the original. Basically, they took everything good and remarkable about the Type 2 Microbus, everything that made it a phenomenon in its time, and timeless enough besides that it’s still a phenomenon today, and said to themselves — okay, but how about if we make it, you know, not like that…?
In other words, they ruined it. Badly.
A worthy successor this is not. The utterly hopeless beigeity of the ID.Buzz, in the shadow of its vehicular point of origin, renders it a mere single step above the Nissan
PukeJuke in terms of aesthetics. This is one vehicle that deserves the crusher, simply because it exists.This version shows starkly what an utter failure the Buzz’s design is. VW wants people to believe this is the reincarnation of the Type 2, but take away the 2-tone paint and you see a design less striking than the Kia Carnival.
You don’t even have to get out the paint stripper. Even Stevie Wonder could see how generic and boring the new VW is.
Also, who the heck does Kia think they’re tryina fool with that name? They should’ve named it the Kia Dishwater, because it’s about that dull. Just *looking* at it gives me an irrepressible yawning fit.
I mostly agree with your take. There’s a VW dealer down the street from me and they have two two tones and two single color. The single color white and silver just look like minivans but, IMHO, the two tones look pretty nice.
As someone who HAS driven a VW Microbus, (T2) I think you’re placing far too much weight on the original van’s design as justification for its popularity.
By modern standards, vehicles in general were very characterful in the 50’s and 60s. The American domestic brands were also trying their hand at small vans, and they were all quite innovative. Look up pictures of the Corvair-based Chevy Greenbriar, the Dodge A100 and the original Econoline- against this backdrop, the Microbus is charming, but fairly pedestrian. If anything, many people would have considered the VW Microbus to be the boring, ‘refrigerator with wheels’ choice- disposable transport, bound for the crusher. Compared to its 6cyl and V8 rivals, the VW was slow, and by the late 1960’s, significantly outdated.
Regardless, vans as a whole were experiencing something of a moment within the counter-culture movement. 1960s youth were looking to travel, hang out and escape their parents, and vans offered both transport and spacious accommodation. Surfing, beatniks, rock & roll, hippies, dropping acid, the Summer of Love, Vietnam war protests- Vans were there. Entire books can [and have] been written about how a ‘quaint’ West-German import became a counter-culture icon, but it probably boils down to some combination of thrift, second-hand affordability, anti-establishment attitude, and the ‘under-dog’ connotations of driving a slow, anachronistic European van in 1960s America.
The original Microbus remains popular due to its association with a particularly significant time and place in history, and the role vans played for the generation that lived through it. There is nothing Volkswagen’s design or marketing department could do today to recreate that level of organic cultural value, and it’s not fair to judge a new vehicle that must succeed in today’s market by those standards.
In hindsight, VW did make one glaring, fatal mistake- The ID buzz is 20 years too late. They should have just produced their 2001 Microbus concept alongside the New Beetle.
I *love* the Fallout-esque Greenbrier, A100, and original Econoline! They’re all just as iconic as the VW T2, just a little less well-known for it.
I still don’t see these as the successor to the original VW Type 2 at all. This cargo version comes much closer, but the regular version just doesn’t have the versatility. It’s just a cool looking, retro inspired minivan.
The real successor is the regular Transporter, which I know isn’t available in the US.
Every generation of regular Transporter has been used almost exactly like the original Type 2, including as cargo vans, people haulers, basic camper vans, fully kitted campers with pop tops and kitchens, pickup trucks etc. The regular Transporter gets used for everything, and I simply can’t see the ID.Buzz platform being that versatile.
My brother has a basic T6 Transporter with a folding bench/bed in the back, which gets used as a family car 95% of the time, plus is great for hauling furniture and the occasional weekend camping.
One of my friends has a T4 with a pop top and full camping set up, which he travels around Europe in and uses as a home away from home and remote office.
I also know people who have the Caravelle versions, which were used as a spacious, comfortable family road trip bus.
You really could do everything with a regular Transporter.
It’s a shame the latest T7 version is the same as the Ford Transit. That loses some of the charm IMO, and I’ll be very interested to see if the same crowd still buys them.
Wiki page for the T7 Transporter, ie the Turkish-built rebadged 2nd gen Ford Transit Custom (since the 100% VW MQB-based T7 Multivan was linked in another comment) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Transporter_(T7).
I’m surprised they made a crew cab chassis version just for VW. If they also made a regular cab version of that one, they would fully replace the old T6/T6.1 Transporter
Here in nordics the IDbuzzes have been very popular as commercial vehicles. Plumbers, electricians, etc, need the space, 2/l€ fuel and I guess some tax brakes make it very attracting proposition in the cities.
However I think the right choise of US would have been the T7 Multivan. First time it’s not actually Transporter based, but car so it’s better to drive. It’s also very comfy and it’s got also hybrid drivetrain. Caravelle is more utilitarian and available for 9 seater and shares platform with Ford Touran as Transporter is also based on that. And they’ve got some 2.5l hybrid that I’ve never heard of. And also EV variant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Multivan_(T7)
Jason’s buzzing off again.
I really wish you could option the double doors of the cargo version for the passenger ones. I have a lifelong aversion to giant lift gates (as a very tall guy I’ve lost some IQ points to them through the years) and it would be more practical either way.
I like you guys and like this site, but is there *any* vehicle you don’t think is best in its cheapest, slowest, basest form?
It’s a bit stale at this point is all.
Personally I’ve always preferred a high spec version of a basic and popular car to a low spec version of an expensive car.
I buy secondhand around 100,000 kms and after a major service with new struts and front end silicone bushings and tyres. the basic cars especially Japanese cars will have a whole lot of accessories available on yahoo auctions that were never available here in Australia to plug and play in yet secondhand and brand new parts will be a lot cheaper than the expensive car.
The obsession with steelies and unpainted bumpers needs to die. It makes everything look ugly and cheap, even on utilitarian vehicles. There’s nothing cool about the cheapest most basic model.
We’ve moved on from crank windows and no AC, because the savings don’t outweigh the manufacturing complexity. It’s time we do the same with steelies and unpainted bumpers.
Lies made my old Subaru look like some jerk made a ram plate for his beater. Mind the stock body color couldn’t go on after I removed it and the junkyard had unpainted. But it was great at “I don’t care if you cut me off” esthetics.
I think they’re suitable in this application because it is a working vehicle.
I can get with you on the bumpers, but steelies are the right choice for work vehicles.
I HAVEN’T!
Darling I don’t do base model anything.
Because you’re not a plumber. Base has its place.
Heaven forbid. I believe in the dignity of other people’s labor.
Plumbers are the most important people in the world
As someone with the aesthetics of a white van man, you’re welcome to my share of glamour, you can make far better use of it.
And yet they only ever review the top trim level (recent exception: the 1958 Land Cruiser DT just review). If they were serious about base models, when Ford says “here’s the Titanium F-250, Mercedes” she would push back with an “XL or nothing”. I’m not singling out Mercedes, of course, they all do it. I’m honestly not sure you could demand the low-spec version as the manufacturers want the press to get the best experience possible.
We are limited by what is on the media fleets, and most of the time those cars are optioned up the wazoo.
“Why do you have to keep being right about stuff all the time?” 🙂
While I also appreciate a good steel wheel, I group this behaviour alongside the obsession with underpowered, stick shift, regular-cab pickup trucks.
It’s the fetishization of the underdog, and making do with less- A false modesty that lionizes LARPing as a tradesperson, because you don’t feel secure in your white-collar life path, or partaking in classically masculine/workmanly tasks without a vehicular prop to telegraph the seriousness of your life struggle.
No, you can’t just pick up mulch from the garden centre, or a dresser from IKEA in a nice car/truck like a normal person. You wouldn’t want your fellow customers or the staff (gasp..!) to think you were some soft-hands casual… Better to show up looking like a landscaper who works for cash, or an Amazon delivery driver.
Yeah, that will show them!
It’s selectively applying rationality (nobody *needs* anything fancy in their truck) to an irrational purchase.
Never mind that other than cheapness, the site valorizes irrational choices all the time. Irrationally expensive though is a bridge too far.
Agreed, but it goes beyond that. It’s cheapness (and I hate this term) as a form of virtue signalling, usually related to an insecurity.
It’s not even selectively rational- It’s actually irrational. Using the pickup truck example, it would be an insane choice as a family person to tie up new-car money in a pickup truck that only seats 2-3 people. The only private individuals who do that, are wealthy retired men who use the truck as a toy.
Surest sign to me of someone who thinks trying to be good is bad.
I hear a lot about virtue signals but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. What color are they? Do they need to be mounted high or low? Are they flashing or steady? Does every car come with one or are they on new model years? Are the controls on the stalk or they automatic?
I’m very confused.
A lot of folks confuse them with turn signals.
Nawp. Regular cab is shorter, steel doesn’t fatigue like aluminium, stick makes better use of limited resources.
These people whining about the “underpowered, stick-shift” version have only driven autotragics, so they know nothing about the power-sapping, laggy slushboxes, where the manual with half the power will feel much more snappy in real-world use.
Has anyone started selling chrome hemisphere wheel covers for these?
VW is just leaving money on the table by not offering them.
VW offered similar wheels on the 2nd Generation New Beetle. Look up the VW “Heritage” (sometimes called the “Orbit”) wheel. They are great retro wheels. They also offered the “Discus” which was a bit more modern, but clearly retro inspired.
Yup.
It’s the variant we should have gotten in the US but never did and likely never will get.
Do they have boring white so you can live in Walmart parking lots? That would make it pretty nice.
Only if it’s the white that comes off in big geographic chunks.
Will be interesting to see how it competes against the Chinese BEV vans coming to Europe. Definitely needs to be cheaper. Maybe they can do the drop side pickup again too.
That second French ad- dual sliding doors on a split window VW van.
I’ve been hiding among humans too long. I was thinking to myself that this is a great short haul delivery van.
I’ve betrayed my people and their master plan.
I’m gonna go cry myself to sleep.
Wait. I don’t have tear ducts.
I’m gonna go have an existential crises.
Nice van though.
Time wounds all heals.
“You can’t heal if you don’t get hurt…” Praise Kier
Are you the guy who’s been sleeping on the floor in the Eisenhower office building?
Maybe…
Jason, is this an example of the vehicle I texted you a photo of a few days ago?