Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2009 14:26:53 -0700
Reply-To: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Scott Daniel - Turbovans <scottdaniel@TURBOVANS.COM>
Subject: Re: Where is Mecca?
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Some factors in why the West Coast rules when it comes to VW's and VW Buses,
and thus Vanagons :
One, Southern California is the home of hot rod cars. The idea and culture
started there. 'Little Duce Coupe' and all that ........it's deeply woven
into the Southern California culture and lifestyle. So loving and saving
and modifying cars is a way of life for millions of people, there , and in
the West in general.
Two- Desert racing took off in Southern California starting in the late
60's. A huge part of that was all VW Bug based..........tube frame custom
desert racers with pumped up air-cooled bug type engines, and most
ironically, the Meyers Manx Dune Buggy. I raced in the very first Mexican
1000 Baja Off Road Race in 1967 ( not in a VW though ) and Bruce Meyers
himself, the originator of the shortened Bug pan based fiberglass body Dune
Buggy was in the race too. This started a huge movement of desert
racing.....racing .cars, modified and performance parts etc. ............a
HUGE industry in southern California , and still going today, a large part
of it VW based. You can even build a Baja Bug , and spend 70,000-plus
dollars building a race-grade Baja Bug.,.......build it up from the ground
up, and not use one single stock VW part, yet every part is based on a VW
part, and often will work on stock VW's ..........yet it's all custom -
stuff like 3 shocks with remote reservoirs on each rear wheel, for example -
so, huge VW history going back 50 years, and doing just 'everything' with
them, and to them.
Three...........Beach and Surf Culture , and the VW Bus. The VW Micro Bus
..........whatever you want to call it, was THE surf/beach Iconic vehicle,
along with the Ford Woody Station wagon. Gazillons of custom and show and
performance VW Buses have been built..........all over as well, like say
Kansas,, yes, , but most of all in Southern California I suspect. The VW
Bus segues to the Vanagon of course.
Four - climate and culture. On most of the west coast, of the populated
areas, from south of somewhere north of San Francisco down to
Mexico...........the weather is NICE.......nice weather about 7 or even 8
months of the year, or darn close to that. . And winters are wet, at the
worst, mainly. There is no 6 months of slogging through ice and yuck and
snow . There's no salt used on the roads. It's dry and sunny a lot. Unless
you park your VW Van under a redwood tree in Guerneville in Sonoma Country,
which does have wet winters................your van isn't going to get moss
growing on it, or upholstery moldy smelling, or whatever, like it could in
damper climates. The nice weather means it's easier to work on cars and VW
vans most months of the years. There are just many ways the climate and
culture are conducive to loving cars............the classic VW Bus being
right up there in cultural icon status. Haight -Asbury and the whole hippie
thing, for example.
The vangon is kind of the VW Micro Bus grown up. Vastly better in every
way, yet relatively lacking in true cache and soul-pizzazz like those early
goofy even crude Buses. . The Vanagon is what's left over from that VW Bus
colure hay-day let's say, in terms of VANS, not cars.
The culture part - Southern California, and California in general ( aside
from Silicon Valley and electronics ) is a CAR CULTURE. Cars are a big, big
deal there. Less so I'd say, than in much of the East. For areas like
Oregon, Washington in particular, ( and all of California )
............vanagons just make good cozy sensible vehicles to haul people
in, or go camping in, etc. . Kind of a very natural part of it's element.
Yeah, it's a 'natural' in the West, and the West itself supports their
existence mainly climatically and culturally, and infrastructure of
course..........not hard to get Vanagon parts anywhere in the West, for
example - . Especially if you know where to shop or look in junkyards.
Vanagons are still on the rising part of the curve, of their
Usefulness and Development. And the whole West, in general, supports that.
For example, there are lot of Syncro's in ski-country Colorado - another
case of a vehicle perfectly evolved and adapted to its envirnoment, another
'Natural' . No wonder there are a lot of vanagons yet, especially in the
West. And there's no real replacement for them, not quite, all things
considered.
Did I mention I'm working on 7 of them to sell ? . Six of them are West
Coast, 'no rust' ones too, and mostly 'no dents' as well. I post a list of
them.
And let's treasure every one, and no parting out them unles they are really
rusted or crashed. They're too precious to waste. And let's get a lot out
of them while driving, roads, and gettting fuel are as we know it currently.
The way things are going with electronics and goverenment, it's easy to
suspect that in 20 years, or surely by 30 years from now, the goverment
wil control what and where we drive, and computers will do the driving on
computer controlled roads, and there won't be driving as we know it now.
Hopefully that won't happen .........but it's easy for me to think
that's the direction things are going .............let's treasure and use
what we have now .........cause it looks like the age of the car is ending,
and the age of the electron is taking over. A Volkswagen V-10 TDI Tourareg
SUV won the 2009 Dakar Rally in South America recently by the
way................ a vehicle that is only very distantly related to the
Vanagon, but it IS related !
Scott Daniel Foss
www.turbovans.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Rodgers" <inua@CHARTER.NET>
To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 11:34 AM
Subject: Re: Where is Mecca?
> What is it with Vanagons and the East Coast vs the West Coast. Here in
> Alabama I associate with the east coast, and Vanagons are few and far
> between. I rarely ever see a Vanagon in the Birmimgham area - although I
> do see them. I can go months and not see a one. When I was in Santa Fe
> there were quite a few. But from discussions, the left coast is where
> they are in great numbers. What differences in attitudes might have
> created such a phenomenon - few on the right coast, more on the left
> coast?
>
> John Rodgers
> 88 GL Driver
>
> Matthew Snook wrote:
>> I spent the day not looking for Westies. I parked my mobile office ('84
>> Westy) and did some writing at the Mt. Tabor park, relaxed by playing
>> dobro
>> at a Gypsy Jazz jam session on Division Street in the evening, and parked
>> overnight at a friend's house, all in SE Portland. I've never seen so
>> many
>> Westies and other vanagons! (My friend -another musician- even drives a
>> stripped out diesel Vanagon.) So I got to wondering, what is the Westy
>> Mecca? Where is the highest density of vanagons to be found? I know
>> it's a
>> rhetorical question. Just wondering where folks seem to see the most
>> Westies and Vanagons. :)
>>
>> Matt
>>
>>
>>
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