Date:         Mon, 30 Aug 1999 13:01:07 EDT
Reply-To:     KENWILFY@AOL.COM
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         KENWILFY@AOL.COM
Subject:      Group Purchase of diesel Vanagons from Germany?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Talked to Detlev today and he said he made a cool find in Germany.  He went
to a yard where they had 66 Vanagons there that are all high top conversions.
 These vans range from '85-'91 models and are all diesels.  The vans are
yellow and the high top is a factory installation.  There is enough room to
stand up inside the van with no problem and the sliding door even has an
extension on the top of it to allow you to  stand up in the door way!  The
diesel engines are all 1.7l Normally Aspirated and many are 5-speeds.  These
vans were used by the postal system over in Germany to carry packages.  They
have the front windows but are like a panel van in the rear.
The 1.7l engine is basically a 1.9l with smaller pistons.  So they could be
bored out and 1.9l pistons put in their place giving you more power (around
70-something hp) at around 30 mpg.

Detlev says if we wanted to we could do a group purchase of these vans that
would cut down on the individual shipping costs and hassles with customs.
The vans range in price from $1200-2800 each and we might even get a better
price if we bought all of them at once!  Also shipping costs would only be
around $500-800 each if we brought over a good group of these and then
customs is alot easier as well when dealing with larger numbers of cars
coming in at once rather than just one vehicle.
Detlev says that he would be interested in doing the negotiating on the
purchase of these vans for a small fee (a couple hundred per van).
So I wanted to ask the list what they thought.  If we get enough people
together to buy these vans we could get some really nice diesel vans or
candiates for the I-4 swap.  The hightop makes them really good candidates
for camper conversions as well.
Any folks interested in this please email me or call me here at
(609)-327-0027 today or tonight at (609)-765-1583.  I need to get this
together pretty quickly though so let me know asap.
Thanks
Ken Wilford
Van-Again
John 3:16