TheSamba.com :: View topic - Have you SEEN ONE on the road lately? Vanagon Spotters Thread

Sun Mar 23, 2008 7:17 pm

Can't go 10 min. without seeing one here in Santa Cruz. What with Vans everywhere, Volks-cafe (I mean Van-Cafe) just down the street I Guess we are pretty spoiled!

Sun Mar 23, 2008 7:31 pm

I live in the east village NYC and although they are very rare in the city,in my area there was a brown 83 westy and a bay westy within a few blocks.The bay was really beat up but I was someday hoping to see a for sale sign,probably would get it for a song,nice project(it ran),but it has since dissappeared.There is also a guy with a white weekender I've seen at the shop I use.Been on the lookout for Brooklynvanagon or Luvdavdubs.Keep your eyes out for my silver wolfsburg!

Sun Mar 23, 2008 7:47 pm

See a couple a month here in Phoenix, usually loaded down headed towards the mountains...

Sun Mar 23, 2008 8:48 pm

Lanval..

then someone has a westy that looks very like yours...

oh well... I waved at him a lot...

:-) :-)

Sun Mar 23, 2008 9:28 pm

connecticut offers little in the way of vws. i see one or two driving when summer comes around... thats other than my friend tracy who drives a 66 sundial camper.. i think. thats it though.

Sun Mar 23, 2008 10:07 pm

i have mine at school then a friend, she has a 1991 carat orly blue vanagon we park next to eachother at school. haha

Mon Mar 24, 2008 5:44 am

my daughter & her boy-friend live 2 blocks from my wife and me. Between us , we have 4 vanagon westys, a vanagon 7-pass & 2 bay westys, so I see these a lot. Other than ours, there are not more than 4 or 5 others in a city of less than 50,000 (Charleston, West Virginia)

Mon Mar 24, 2008 7:10 am

VanagOnly-
I've seen your Wolfie parked on ave C I think....

In my hood in Brooklyn there's a burgundy Carat and a burgundy GL, a two tone blue 84 GL, an aircooled westy, a blue syncro (haven't seen this one in a while), a white 91 GL, and a TDI badged syncro with oregon plates. Oh and there was a nice looking burgundy full westy with SA rheins and SA grill with Texas tags for a while. haven't seen that one recently either.

Mon Mar 24, 2008 8:30 am

brooklynvan wrote: VanagOnly-
I've seen your Wolfie parked on ave C I think....

Yeah,that's me

Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:26 am

I probably see abouut 3 - 4 a day here in Nor-Cal

Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:33 am

we just came back from a month in Australia and I was pleasantly surprised to see 4 or 5 a day as we travelled

Tue Mar 25, 2008 7:58 am

I know of five within a 10 minute walk radius - and I live in the rust belt.

IMO they aren't that rare.

Tue Mar 25, 2008 8:29 am

i work in n. and ne. portland after first reading this post i decided to count them during my work day.between 8am and 430pm i counted 6 parked and 5 driving and i never left ne portland!!!again vanagons are plentiful here in portland

Tue Mar 25, 2008 8:59 am

In the South Bay (LA) I see at least 5 or 6 Westies on any given day along with 4-5 multivans. Most are '86 or newer. I pay more attention to the '85 and older ones(more rare and also what I own). I also see 2-3 AC Westies depending on which route I take. We were just at Wheeler Gorge (Ojai) this weekend and saw a green AC, a brown '86, a '86+ syncro multi, and a dark blue '86+. We are very lucky. :D :D

Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:07 am

Mostly in my dreams here in (very) rural Northwest Arkansas. Not exacly the land of Van-Cafe and GoWesty. My '84 Westy is the only one I see regularly. I know there have to be some more around though. Eureka Springs is a semi-hippie kind of tourist town about 25 miles away. There have to be at least few lurking around there. Anybody on here from my area.

Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:35 am

Oh man, those NYC posts remind me how lucky I am now (lived in NYC 15 years, most days my Bay & Vanagon were the only 'real' VWs I saw)

Now I live in Oregon, outside Eugene, and see at least one Vanagon every time I go out to the store. When I go INTO Eugene, there's a Bay or Vanagon on pretty much every block, except in the wealthier areas where the housewives favor Eurovans. On the rural highway where I live, I see a van or two daily and a Beetle every couple of hours

Tue Mar 25, 2008 10:59 am

There's a white '87 westy with a mashed up rear bumper a few blocks away from my house and I saw 3 westy's and a white GL in Sausalito yesterday.

It's no uncommon for me to see at least 13 or more Vanagons per day. They're everywhere here in Marin.

Tue Mar 25, 2008 11:14 am

I see loads of them here in the Outer Sunset in San Francisco.. probably a dozen or more in the 5 block radius where I live, ranging from Syncro Westy to Westy to Weekender,.. in all matters of condition. Rust buckets to nice restoration to working rigs.

Not too many plain Vanagons.. although there is a "Hobie Cat" special edition I see plying the roads out here, occasionally... unfortunatelty it is parked outside too much and has the worst case of window rot I've seen (in person).

I do not see so many on the open road when headed to the mountains or points north and south..

Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:05 pm

70 140 wrote: I know of five within a 10 minute walk radius - and I live in the rust belt.

IMO they aren't that rare.

Just got in from my afternoon run, took a camera with me and snapped a few photos of the ones I run past. Sorry for the crap photos, but I wasn't about to break my pace for a Vanagon :)

Vanagon GL Westy

Westy - at the euro garage, I think it belongs to the owner/mechanic. I see it driving alot

Another Westy at another garage. Showed up last summer, hasn't moved since. There is also a baywindow, a few transporter/eurovans.

On the other streets of my route there is a silver passenger Vanagon with a Subaru swap, but it wasn't around today, and an ugly-ass brown country holmes type camper with the horizontal lift pop-top - also missing.

These are just the ones on the route I run...

Tue Mar 25, 2008 12:54 pm

rarely see them up here, but I was in san diego this past weekend and they were EVERYWHERE