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Date:         Wed, 14 Feb 2007 08:15:27 -0700
Reply-To:     Martin Jagersand <jag@CS.UALBERTA.CA>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Martin Jagersand <jag@CS.UALBERTA.CA>
Subject:      Tales from Europe and the dream of a mint camper.
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Having my sabbatical this year naturally the idea of doing some travel ling in Europe came up and of course the thought of trying to pick up a mint VW camper, preferably a TD.

So to optimize my chances I selected my arrival to be in Munich, near the alpes, and a natural place to have a good camper selection I thought. On the plus side, Munich also has a good public transportation network, radiating a good 40-50 kilometer out from the centre, so I can get around without a car for a while.

Having arrived, I spent my first weekends stopping by the used car dealers. As in most cities, they tend to conglomerate in certain areas, and in Munich it is around Bodenseestrasse. To those vacationing in central Europe, Bodensee (lake Constance) brings up associations to the beautiful lake and nature on the rim of the German alpes, and the hotels and services that serve the mostly affluent tourists coming there. However, Bodenseestrasse in Munich is a drab gloomy stretch of car lots and junk yards, far from what the name might imply.

A few days of searching through the car lots indeed turned up several VW T3 campers of various types. In Europe there are many more conversions than the Westfalia we are familiar with. However, the shape was disappointing to say the least, with typical rust cancer that was so far gone that body panels would have rusted completely apart in the joints, and mechanics with >200,000km+. And on top of that, when one found a rare candidate looking good from the outside, the used car dealer had invariably used the inside as a storage shed for everything from tires to engines making the camping interior look like a well used oil rag.

Back to the drawing board, I looked up a few VW dealers in the phone book. The local dealer was quite friendly, and tried to help, but didn't deal with campers at all. All said that the big camper dealer in town was Autohaus Christl. After nearly 2h of train, subway and finally a bus out into suburbia I arrived at Christl. It had gotten nearly dark by the time, but I catched a glimpse of several T4 Westy's in the parking lots around the dealer.

Inside the dealer there were lots of polished new VW cars as expected, and in a corner also two VW T5 based campers. While waiting for a salesman I naturally took a look at them. The larger of the two was a T5 truck chassis equipped with a box unit on the back featuring a typical RV kitchen, a bathroom with shower, and most eyecatching, a large "flip down" queen bed, that comes down from the ceiling. Not being in the market for an RV, but a small campervan, I switched my attention to the smaller T5. By now I also noticed a miscongruence with the rest of the clientele and me. They were almost all clad in suits, and I was the only one with jeans.

The new T5 camper is not produced by Westfalia (Mercedes bought the Westfalia company). Either VW build it themselves, or subcontract it to some company that didn't put an obvious label anywhere. On the surface, the new model looked nice, and features some improvements over the T4. It is slightly larger, the interior is slightly brighter, and last but not least, they did away with the cumbersome "under the seat bank storage of the dinner table" (which is the biggest drawback of the T4 Westy IMHO. After cooking dinner I have to get the table out and set up without kicking over any pots or pans.) Instead the T5 table tips down, sort of like on the multivans, and slides backwards out of the way. The compromise is that the table because of this is a bit on the small side for a gourmet dinner.

However, after a more careful inspection, the T5 camper turned into disappointment. Instead of the sturdy plywood cabinets with long lasting kitchen counter type surface in the T3 and T4 westies, much of T5 is made from cheap-feeling plastic. The accordion style closet doors jammed already on the new unit, and I doubt that a even 5 year old T5 camper will look as nice as our by now average 20 year old T3's. After some time a salesman in a black suit walked over. I politely asked for some brochures, and he instantly tried to push a fully loaded T5 "comfortline" style van. An inquiry about the about 10k less expensive "trendline" returned that in Germany nobody would consider that. An inquiry about test drives returned that such a thing would have to be scheduled in advance. As I was by now clearly not desired in the new car dealership I left for the nearby dealer certified used car lot.

The used car hall was full of gleaming Audi A6, A8 and other high end models. While waiting for a salesman, I browsed the rows, but couldn't find a single camper. After 1/2 h of waiting I suspected that I was not thought of as a profitable customer type, and therefore ignored. After about 10 minutes of trying to impose myself I finally got to talk to a sales rep. On asking what kind of campers they had available I was told that I could look on the Internet for the ads. After a about 10 more minutes however I got a printout of the inventory. It was exclusively T5 campers at around Eur 40k. I asked about the T4's I had seen outside, but was told those were just customer vans waiting for repair. Again, no luck with finding the dream campervan.

To be continued.

[Note: The rather bad experience with the particular VW dealership is not at all indicative of my experience in Germany and with Germans in general. Outside of the VW experience, almost everything else has been positive]

Martin (with T3 and T4 westies currently resting in Canada)


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