Should you support VW IDBuzz launch in SoCA?

[swharris]

So hear me out. I know some might not agree with me on this, but I have spoken to many others who share my feeling about this topic.
The history of VWAG and the classic VW enthusiast has been fraught with, IMO, contentious adversarial, and dismissive attitudes from the mother company towards the vintage air-cooled community.

For years and years, VW(specifically VWAG) wanted NOTHING to do with their older air-cooled products once they were out of production. As well, they were at best apathetic and at worst confrontational with the community that loved restored, and promoted those products.
From the extreme of actively seeking out tooling, stock, and supply chains to destroy any and all connection with their air-cooled history, to complete apathy about any and all real support to the hobby community, VW has consistently cast aside the enthusiasts and the cars they loved as anarchistic old useless and antiquated technology in favor of newer technology. Completely divorcing their connection with their past...until recently when the overwhelming popularity of nostalgic things was too big to deny any longer. Maybe it is understandable given the Hitler connection, but I digress.

To put things in perspective, other manufacturers have early on "seen the light" of how valuable (and financially profitable) supporting enthusiasts(with parts and factory information) can be. Mercedes, Porsche, Alpha, Ferrari, and even all the domestics have departments that support vintage communities with factory-approved reproduction parts and panels. VWAG only very recently has been dragged kicking and screaming to the table of vintage product support, and even then only with paltry almost useless products.
If it were not for the explosion of values and the aftermarket, we would have almost nothing but a dwindling supply of recycled used parts. In a word, we were all abandoned...intentionally.

So, to my point. Now, when it is convenient for them(VW), they want the vintage community to come out and support a new product on the backs of the very community that they intentionally abandoned long ago. Maybe this is just sour grapes from some old guy who is just tired of scrounging for scraps for too many years. OK, that's a valid point. The people running the company most likely were not even born when those decisions to abandon the vintage community were made. Again, valid but if attitudes at the company have truly changed, I think they need to first acknowledge what has happened in the past and commit to truly supporting air-cooled products and the community at large and not just use the nostalgic reference to sell new shit.

What say you? Personally, I'm going to pass on this event, though I'm sure many vintage bus folk will be there and not give it a second thought. Maybe I'm way out in left field here tilting at my own personal windmill of misperceived abandonment issues. Oh and hey, they are going to give you a IDbuzzer keychain or gift of some sort...

Just in case you would like to go, here is the reg. link.

https://vw.g2planet.com/idbuzz_launch/register_bldr2_2

[steve244]

Boycotting an event that pays homage to air cooled buses to get Volkswagen to pay more attention to air cooled fans seems self defeating.
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82 AC vanagon approx 200K miles (3K are mine).
DD is a 2015 Leaf
Road Trip to Hell (FL 2023)
The Vanagon's drivetrain and chassis restomod thread. Best sung to the tune of I Did It My Way...