I agree completely. The older vehicles have a lot going for them! Not
the least of which is a lot less plastic. Plastic manufacturing is great
to make tooling for and bring a product to market cheaply. What it is
NOT good for is durability. (How many Vanagons speedos are falling out?)
What I really miss most on mine is:
1. quietness;
2. ABS brakes. (Even having practiced on skids as much as I am, when I
got into a bad situation when I hit a deer really hard, I locked them
up, skidded off the road and into the ditch). I recovered, got it out of
the ditch and drove it home. But it would have been MUCH better off with
ABS!
I know they made them in europe with ABS; it would be tempting to get
the parts and retro fit to my 91.
Subie or I4 engine? not that important to me.
Al Brase

jimt wrote:

>If someone were to give me the choice of a new 45000 dollar eurovan camper
>or a lesser 25000 to rework my vanagon, I would take the 25000 and go to
>work on my vanagon.
>
>It relates to this.
>
>The vanagon is a van converted to camper.
>The eurovan is minivan dolled up to camper.
>
>They advertised barbie with the wrong vehicle.
>
>BTW on my vanagon.
>I have spent a lot more than I paid for my westy on it in three and a half
>years and very little of it actually on maintenance.
>
>Biggest decision made was for my power plant to push me down the road and up
>the hills.  Total cost of that project was about 2800 dollars US.  BTW that
>changed my engine technology to 1994.  Cooling system/heater system is 1996
>and 2000 technology.  My aux heater is 1998 technology.  Sound system is
>2003 technology.  Van base though it is 1980 tech it exceeds the tech of any
>"minivan" currently on the road except for those listed as small commercial
>vans rated for heavy hauling.  Only the chevy, ford, or heavy toyota etc
>full vans match its technology in the frame.  And they are still using their
>1980s technology in the frames etc of theirs as well.  They just updated the
>internals and the breaking.
>
>In the meantime my neighbor has gone out and bought another new jeep after 5
>years to get a vehicle that is still basically the same as the 1998 he
>traded in.  he still has a massive debt.  I have the pinkslip daddyoh.
>
>Long live
>Ed Roth
>And
>Rat Fink
>
>jimt
>
>
>