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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[Tim53]

Well, I didn't hear about this event, but I did lease an idBuzz in September (before the lease tax credit expired). I've put almost 2000 miles on it since I got it, and I have to tell you I've never enjoyed driving a vehicle as much as I do the Buzz. It's more like watching a movie than driving - the most noise it makes is from the tires on the road and the sounds other cars make. When cruise is on, it doesn't care whether you're going uphill or downhill, it just goes. I test drove several other EVs before deciding on the Buzz. The Rivian was very nice, but it's a lot more expensive than the already pretty expensive Buzz.

For some background as to "why": I'm 72 years old now, and got tired of working on my wind-cooled and water-pumper VWs myself some years ago. (I still have two Model A Fords I need to decide what I want to do with). At one time in the late 1980s, I had 7 Splitties and one 1960 Singlecab, and had rebuilt some 2 dozen engines. That was also back when one could rebuild an engine in a weekend for about $300. I never owned a breadloaf, but I did have a 1980 Westfalia for several years. Then, I had a 1993 Eurovan GL (ate 3 transmissions and had electrical problems over the 130K miles I owned it). That was the first new car I ever bought. I traded that in on a low-mileage 2001 Eurovan Weekender in 2002. I still have the 2001. It has 242K miles on it now. My wife cracked an oil pan and drove it without oil for a couple miles many years ago, so the new engine (not rebuilt) has about 125K miles on it. The transmission was rebuilt about 20K miles ago, and I just put several K into fixing several mechanical issues and replaced the canvas in the pop top. Before we got the Buzz, we drove it from So Cal to Vermont and back. It still doesn't use a drop of oil. Recently, it's been sounding like a CV joint might be going, so I'll have to get that taken care of. But that van has been pretty wonderful, with the exception that it only gets 18mpg on the road.

When I showed the idBuzz to my sister in law last month, she asked me "how does it run?". I replied "it doesn't". Another person asked, "is it air or water cooled?" I answered truthfully "it's air cooled". (there's a fan that comes on to keep the battery cool while charging at a charging station). The EPA rates the range on the 4 motion models as 231 miles. I get almost that at 80% charge, and the couple times I've charged to 100% just before a long drive, it's said 265-269 miles. I've never run it all the way down, but did get to 15% on one rainy day when we got stuck in traffic for an hour and a half behind an accident on the I-10 near Cabazon. I've only had to wait about 5 minutes for a charger at a Walmart (they had only 4), and I've looked into where I'd need to charge on a trip to Utah we make about 4 times a year (there are plenty Electrify America stations). Charged once at a Rivian station, where the folks inside the lounge gave me a Hot Wheels idBuzz another Buzz owner left them.

At our vacation home in Joshua Tree (with new Level 2 charger outlet installed).

[EverettB]

Thanks for posting a first hand account of ownership
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