Amy’s Garage

We had a beautifully taken care of 1980’s Volkswagen Vanagon GL come into my shop Auto Craftsmen the other day. What was remarkable about this old camper van was that it was born and raised in Vermont.

Now for those of you that have never lived in Vermont, you need to understand that vehicles just don’t last a long time in the Green Mountain State. The road crews of VT in their attempt to keep the snow off the roads during the long 6 months of winter dump tons and tons of salt all over our roads. The salty snow clings to the underbodies and sides of our automobiles and rusts the heck out of them. Every vehicle I have ever owned I have lost to ‘Rust!’ The engine would have gladly kept running, but the body of the vehicle was rusting off the bare bones of the frame and it wouldn’t pass the yearly state inspection that takes those old rusty buckets off our

roads.

Well, this van has been truly loved. It’s owner must have given it a bath on a regular basis for the body to be in such fine shape. The van came to the shop for an oil change and a new battery. The battery lives under the passenger seat. The seat flips around slips forward to give access to the battery compartment. Typical Volkswagen. Those Germans love to make working on Volkswagens interesting, amusing… keep you guessing where things live. Oh, and of course you need to have special Volkswagen tools to even think about working on them.

This van has over 300,000 miles on it.

Seriously… 300k. Remarkable! No it’s not the original engine. It was rebuilt by my tech Jim. But it has driven over 300,000 thousand miles of the highways and byways of this country, Canada and Mexico. It’s traveled to every state in this huge country of ours and has been to Alaska and back.

What is so cool about this van is the interior. It is a camper van. Contains a very comfy bed, really cool kitchen set up and the top pops open so you can stand up in it. There is even an awning that connects to the side so you can have a porch to sit under once you have set up camp.

It would be such fun to take this old van on a road trip. Was a treat to see such a fine old van taken care of so well, and enjoyed so much!

Anyone out there have a Vanagon to top this one?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 6:04 pm and is filed under Auto Craftsmen, Driving Review, My Personal Car Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.