In a message dated 3/9/05 11:32:01 AM, afox@CNR.COLOSTATE.EDU writes:

<< i just dont want to sell this vanagon thing to unsuspecting regular people
without letting them know the truth and i think all of you should be more
forthcoming in expressing what vanagons are really about to everyday people. >>

Diogenes, blow out the light!  Andrew, I have to commend you for your brutal
honesty.  Straight talk without a bunch of provisos has become a rare
commodity for sure.

The truth: a Vanagon is a neat, utilitarian platform of just the right size,
beyond that, it sucks.  I pity the poor naif who comes to a Vanagon with less
than my ample and varied skills; he is in for an expensive and rude awakening,
not to mention sending time riding shotgun in a rollback.

My only excuse is that I was trying to please my sweet wife who wanted a
sunroof Vanagon.  I can forgive her for she is 11 years my junior so, as an
adolescent, she had these ridiculous images of ridiculous, dilettante hippies and of
the Partridge Family impressed onto her young mind by Madison Avenue.

Within a month of the purchase of that first van, I was into the exhaust
system and coolant system in a big way, and it was only a five year old vehicle at
the time.  And then Winter stopped by for his annual visit.  That was when
the thought of a Syncro first entered my pea-sized brain.

I, as any Vanagon owner with some time in the saddle, could fill volumes with
war stories and in most of them I kept thinking there was something wrong
with me -- that I (! ! !) had failed the Vanagon.  While Freud might have a field
day exploring the convolutions of my mind, lucidity and reason has returned.

Although I loathe the style of the alternatives to a Vanagon, like a Vanagon
they are merely an appliance and, unlike a Vanagon, they hum along doing their
thing day after day with no fuss or muss.

Thanks, Andrew, you're a man among day dreamers.

George