Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2000 20:37:58 -0400
Reply-To: Alain Pierre Hovasse <aphovasse@HOME.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Alain Pierre Hovasse <aphovasse@HOME.COM>
Subject: Re: Vanagon Nirvana in Seattle
In-Reply-To: <NDBBLBPGOLNMLKACPFPLCEPECFAA.tyg@oz.net>
Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
That reminds me: I recently moved from London England, where I had another
vanagon, not a westy but an amazing conversion nevertheless. Before I bought
it privately, I did some research and found this israeli dude in Fulham who
bought and sold vw campers of all kinds. Must have had 20/30 there. I talked
with him and his wife for about an hour getting all kinds of good info. They
didn't really have what I wanted at the time (hard to believe) but I kept in
touch with them from time to time as I looked at various models in the buy
and sell ads. He mostly bought and sold from traveling Australians, who buy
a camper in London, do a grand tour of Europe (always with a surf board or
two) for extended periods of time and then return, sometime to sell the
camper back to this same guy. He told me he loved those campers and
sometimes hated to sell them. In fact at that time, the British pound was
going through the roof and Aussies were staying away in droves.
My vw was a converted passenger van and had sliding doors on each side. It
had one of those high roofs and swayed a bit in high winds. The inside
however, was totally totally amazing. Some perfectionist had built cabinets,
sink and shelves and had the inside material all color coordinated in some
kind of scottish pattern. Sounds odd but it was very very nice. The woodwork
was excellent.
Ended up driving it all over France several times and even all the way to
Prague and back one summer. Man it was a good machine. It was dubbed The Big
Pig: I had commented upon the very first drive that it handled like a pig
(it was an 86 with no power steering) and my young daughter made the
connection that it was a pig, and a pig it stayed.
Our new one here in Toronto is an 87 Westy, white, more standardized
version. Lovely machine, itching to take it south.
Enough from me
Alain Pierre
on 6/11/00 2:26 PM, Ty Graham at tyg@OZ.NET wrote:
> Having discovered Tom Meyer of Cycoactive is my neighbor, I am approaching a
> state of Vanagon bliss. More Vanagons to look at, work on, and talk about
> than I can almost handle.
>
> In my neighborhood, I could now start a "street of dreams" tour.
>
> My three
> Syncro Westy with max audio and video
> Doublecab with PZwo, OME and Eurospec mucking (_still_ not hot starting.
> thank you very much)
> Carat with ARB refer, lights, soon SA grille
>
> Tom's Westy one block away
> Subaru conversion
> custom hitch and rack
> cool, momentary sink switch install
> ...
>
> Steve H's ~5 blocks away
> 1 or more doublecabs -- almost always one for sale
> 1 singlecab
> sano 90 multivan
>
> Numerous other stock or practically stock Vanagons within walking distance.
>
> To tie all this back to the subject line; Curt Cobain's house is just a few
> blocks away also.
>
> Ty
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