- Joined
- Jul 10, 2025
- Messages
- 122
My couple of my favorite memories of a split window were as follows:
First memory. When I was in the Army, a buddy of mine had a 60's Split Window we would all pile up in to road trip up and down the Washington coast including going to some shows like Lollapalooza. My buddy would only ever put in 2 dollars in gas at any given time. Now this is when gas was 87 cents per gallon so 2 bucks went further but still, we were constantly stopping for gas. Finally I was like "dude, why don't we just fill up so we don't have to pull over so much as we are going to spend the same amount anyway?". He said that was a good idea but we still only ever did 2 bucks at a time! I guess when you are living off an Enlisted GI's wage it is hard to let go of that cash!
Second memory. We had just exited off of I-5 sitting at a light. We noticed the car next to us was smoking and saw it catch on fire under the hood. Anyone with an old air-cooled VW has a fire extinguisher on hand. We grabbed the fire extinguisher, got the hood popped open on the car and put the fire out.
Great memories.
I don't know if most folks these days will "wax nostalgic" over these new EV vans. Those who would are probably past the age of needing a micro bus or just can't justify spending so much and the EV just won't speak to most.
Besides being relatively affordable, the old ones were just different because so many of us learned how to work on them out of necessity as we didn't have the money to have them fixed professionally. There was pride and a feeling of accomplishment in that. The old ones could be hopped up with bolt on parts like carbs and superchargers. You could ad cool oilers where Marvels Mystery Oil would siphon into the gas. You could swap out the engines in an afternoon in the driveway. Every VW from the era had a "how to keep your Volkswagen alive" book.
There was a brotherhood/sisterhood with the old V-Dubs.
Something else a new VW Bus can't capture is the sound of that loud air-cooled 4 cylinder boxer engine behind you, with no sound insulation, making you feel like you are just tearing it up banging through the gears when in reality you are not!
First memory. When I was in the Army, a buddy of mine had a 60's Split Window we would all pile up in to road trip up and down the Washington coast including going to some shows like Lollapalooza. My buddy would only ever put in 2 dollars in gas at any given time. Now this is when gas was 87 cents per gallon so 2 bucks went further but still, we were constantly stopping for gas. Finally I was like "dude, why don't we just fill up so we don't have to pull over so much as we are going to spend the same amount anyway?". He said that was a good idea but we still only ever did 2 bucks at a time! I guess when you are living off an Enlisted GI's wage it is hard to let go of that cash!
Second memory. We had just exited off of I-5 sitting at a light. We noticed the car next to us was smoking and saw it catch on fire under the hood. Anyone with an old air-cooled VW has a fire extinguisher on hand. We grabbed the fire extinguisher, got the hood popped open on the car and put the fire out.
Great memories.
I don't know if most folks these days will "wax nostalgic" over these new EV vans. Those who would are probably past the age of needing a micro bus or just can't justify spending so much and the EV just won't speak to most.
Besides being relatively affordable, the old ones were just different because so many of us learned how to work on them out of necessity as we didn't have the money to have them fixed professionally. There was pride and a feeling of accomplishment in that. The old ones could be hopped up with bolt on parts like carbs and superchargers. You could ad cool oilers where Marvels Mystery Oil would siphon into the gas. You could swap out the engines in an afternoon in the driveway. Every VW from the era had a "how to keep your Volkswagen alive" book.
There was a brotherhood/sisterhood with the old V-Dubs.
Something else a new VW Bus can't capture is the sound of that loud air-cooled 4 cylinder boxer engine behind you, with no sound insulation, making you feel like you are just tearing it up banging through the gears when in reality you are not!
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