I got a programmable wiper relay for my 85 GTi a year or so ago from
Adirondack Auto Brokers (www.germanautoparts.com), but I recall it was drop
shipped from Autotech.  it is bosch, has this # on it:  0 986 335
058.  Package indicates it is for many makes of cars.  I have not tried it
on the vanagon yet, but am pretty confident (~95%) it will work.  When I
ordered it, the guy said that there were some "bad" ones on the market for
a while, but now they were getting "good" ones.  One thing I did notice
with this relay was that I lost the feature of using the washer and having
the wipers go for a few seconds after letting go of the handle.

As to the pick n pull places.  I believe these were pretty common on the A3
series cars, which started about 1993.  A friend had a pretty basic golf at
that time and it had it.  I think they were out before that, but maybe on
the higher end cars only???

Edward