David Beierl wrote:

> At 03:22 PM 2/23/2000 , Jennifer Jones wrote:
> >His main issue (along with lack of power and crappy gas mileage) was safety
> >and design.  He said Vanagons just fold up like an accordion when hit.
>
> Well, no.  Maybe he was thinking of a Microbus -- I think they're pretty
> tender in front.  But the Vanagon is built extremely stiff to give as good
> as possible protection in the absence of a big crush space in front.

YOu know, after Ralph Nader did his best to ban the T1 Microbus from the streets
of America, VW put the best engineers and top DMs on the T2 bus and T3 Vanagon
to make them some of the safest cars around. The T4 Eurovan is still one of the
safest new cars in the new car show rooms today!

At my fav. junkyard there was a 88 Syncro, in which a woman forced it to have a
date with a large pine tree, @ 80 kmh (50 mph). It was not nice of her, the
Syncro kissed the pine directly in line with the left headlight, leaving a
serious hickey on the front end of the poor van. Her left knee left a large dent
in the dash, and she spent some weeks in hospital. There were no damage from the
left front wheel and back. Also no stretch damage at all to any of the right
side of the body or frame. Of course, the force of the impact was concentrated
in a very small area, so it did quite some damage to the Syncro. I guess she
would be better off if hitting a wall or similar.

I probably scared any possible Vanagon owners now, didn't I?

PerL
87 Syncro 112i