> In the same vein, my road atlas slides in very nicely between the cushion
> and swivel mechanism on the passenger side, with about an inch sticking
out.

All these people with road atlas ... my my use the space under the pass seat
to stash the laptop :)
I just did 16K KM's Victoria BC to Quebec City PQ & back
We went with only our Garmin NRoute S/W
(not a plug for Garmin S/W realy needs work but does function),
GPS receiver, & laptop no Atlas here any more :)
(well we do keep out plastic covered map of BC & AB :)
But I have got to say driving with GPS & routing software realy removed the
stress
I navigated in thrid world Sask.  tractor trails from 11PM to 3AM to the
Grass Land National park on the border of Sask & Montana with some of the
roads no more
than gravel tracks with out one wrong turn, and most 'gravel intersections'
w/o
a sign I never would have been able to do that so easy with an 'Atlas' ...
or hitting the big city & just drving right to the historic point or museum
w/o the usual 5 wrong turns
and an xtra hr in the car are times of the past

And to be able to book mark waypoints to 'secret' lakes and beaches
that I may not get back to for years but I can now just share those
waypoints with friends is realy cool...

which reminds me some one said they would start a memebers secret vanagon
spots
where was that again we can post simple gps coords ...

end rant

ps. so if your next vanagon upgrade does not include a gps think again :)