The VW Eurosavings Plan (fly, buy, drive & ship) brochure

[RainierSyncro]

Found this brochure in the closet. It explains the VW Eurosavings Plan where you can fly over, pick up your new VW from one of 4 factories, drive around Europe and drop it off at 14 different cities for shipment back to the US. It is from 1983.

Has anybody done the fly & buy from the factory with their new Vanagon? Like to hear some stories. Since this can fit in a business sized letter, anybody want it?

[Herr Motorspiele]

The golden era! Wish I could go back in time.

[Klister]

Irmela and Heinrick - my van's previous owners, purchased the syncro new in Germany in 1991, drove it around Europe a bit, and then had it shipped to Seattle. I bought it a few years ago when Irmela, 82 yo, was still driving it. It had 91,000 miles on it - they rebuilt the engine to a 2.3 L.

[Ahwahnee]

My van's first owners (the Beardshears from Noblesville Indiana) also took delivery under this program in June 1984. I bought the Westy from them in March 1990.

Sure, I would very much like to have the brochure to put with all the original paperwork that they saved from the delivery... but of course if there is someone here who is an original owner who took factory delivery then their interest should have precedence.

[Ahwahnee]

This was what came with my van outlining the 1984 Tourist Delivery program. I sent Everett a copy which he kindly added to the Samba archive.

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/manuals/1984vanagon_tasp.php

Whatever the fate of your brochure, I hope a copy gets added to the collection here.

[RainierSyncro]

Ahwahnee - PM me your address and I'll mail it off.

[hans j]

I would imagine Christopher Boltz of http://www.vwpix.org/ would be interested as well if he doesn't already have one.
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1986 Canadian Syncro Westy TDI - 1989 Syncro Single Cab - 2001 Audi S4 - 1981 VW Caddy ABA - 1980 VW Caddy EV - 1973 VW T-181

[kamzcab86]

I'd love a scan, or good photo, of the Rabbit Convertible page(s).🙂

Mom's '84 convertible (car I learned to drive with) was a Tourist Delivery car. Original owner drove it around France for a few months, shipped it to the States where he sold it Mom a few months later. Oddly, it came with an Owner's Manual in French; Mom had to source an English version from a dealer.
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~Kamz
1986 Cabriolet: www.Cabby-Info.com
1990 Vanagon Westfalia: Old Blue's Blog
2016 Golf GTI S
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." - 孔子

[Abscate]

Over the years , some of these plans were incredible. You could get free airfare, museum tour, a month of free car use, buying at factory invoice and then saving destination charges. All in , it could be $5000 of value, easily
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.ssS!

[vanis13]

Long story short (for context I was Born in 1972 in communist Prague, CZ)

A few years before 1980 my first stepdad got asked in Prague for a hotel recommendation by a US couple - a former Polish man Vieseu, who escaped during WW2 and his US wife Patti. Hotels were not very nice under communism and very expensive for foreigners so my stepdad invited them to stay in our apartment.

Turned out every few years they bought a German car, usually a VW, drove it to visit his family in Poland and had the car shipped back to the Chicago area. They visited our house at least one other time if not more on such car-buying/family-visit plans.

In summer of 1980 I'm a little kid excited to go on a road trip to Yugoslavia to visit the Mediterranean Sea. I was super into Jacque Custoe and all things underwater. It was me, my brother, mom, and stepdad.

A bunch of stuff happened for which my mom could have gone to jail for if we ended up back in CZ but we ended up in Western-minded Austria as political refugees.

For a long time afterwards I thought mom had all this arranged with Patty and Vieseu, after all who takes on such a crazy risky trip?, but it was only once in Austria that Mom reached out to them because under communism one could trust no one. Even without her asking they offered to sponsor us for US citizenship!

As an example of what the result could be of saying something not aligned to the communist party line: Mom had a very smart/learned friend - college professor, spoke 13 languages, etc. - who in a pub one evening said something disparaging of communism and ended up in a Siberian Gulag for 6 years.

Without Patty and Vieseu's US sponsorship we would have likely ended up in Canada, Australia, or somewhere else and I am SUPER grateful we ended up in the USofA! I still remember flying over the Statue of Liberty in to New York.

Patty and Vieseu had us at their house for a few months to get settled then got us set up with an apartment and car and jobs for parents. My mom worked hard. In addition to her day job, most days she was to 2 or 3am at her art table working on graphic art freelance work. Less that 6 years later my mom has a new house built in the best public highschool district she could find around Chicago so my brother and I could have a good highschool experience (where we were living before then in the close suburbs of Chicago the gangs and drugs were really bad in the 80s)

So as a 7-year-old, I was bummed we only spent one afternoon at the Mediterranean Sea,I still remember seeing and stepping on my first sea urchin , and I am SUPER grateful to end up in this great country!

Even though I didn't think they ever got a Vanagon on any of their trips .......Thank you VW Eurosavings Plan!
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83.5 Westy with Subaru 2.5, 4 spd manual, center seat, COLD A/C on 134a!, Winter camp heated with an Espar B4 gasoline furnace

www.SuperVanagon.com - some stuff I make

[4Gears4Tires]

That's a really cool story. The world is so interconnected.
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'87 Syncro
Ferric Oxyhydroxide Superleggera Edition

[jlrftype7]

[jimf909]

^^^ That's quite a story. Thanks for sharing. My mom's family has a story of slipping out of Lithuania just after WWII. They also went through Austria and landed in Chicago and then the NW suburbs where I grew up so there's some similarity. Others in their family ended up behind the iron curtain for decades.

It's interesting to hear how travel programs as ordinary as picking up a car in a different continent can change lives.
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- Jim

[RainierSyncro]

[Abscate]

Thanks for sharing those stories.
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.ssS!