The reason I am asking is that I have this great '80 Riviera (now with
rebuilt engine), and I'm wondering if I should move to a Westy. My wife and
I will be living in this thing for a long time, and the Riviera conversion
is pretty minimal and the overall interior spartan (although I love the
large popup). My wife would like the westy and I can get a complete westy
interior for $500.00, which would be a lot of work, and even more work to
install spinning captain seats. I'm not afraid of the work, but I doubt it
would be as nice as a newer westy after all the time and effort. Having said
that I do love projects and I know of a few rigs around with blown motors I
could fix up. I guess I need to know if I went this route what model year I
should be looking for to find a significant improvement in interior (aside
from the westy cabinets) from a base model '80. As an example I know of an
84, but it's too far away to just stop by and look. Would it be much "nicer"
inside than a base 80?

On 12/15/06 11:20 AM, "Old Volks Home" <oldvolkshome@GMAIL.COM> wrote:

> In addition to Chris Turner's extraordinary knowledge, keep in mind that
> Riveria Motors, when doing their own camper conversions ordered basic
> "Kombi" stripped down Buses and Vanagons with the rubber mats, vinyl seat
> covers, fixed front seats, etc.  The Westfalia is a pure (so to speak)
> factory conversion that had the niceties like captain's chairs, even as far
> back as 1976 (perhaps even earlier).  The steel dash (with the edge
> pad) Westy was up through 84 (like mine), the vinyl covered variety started
> in 1985, carpet started even earlier on the "GL" based models, which
> Westfalia usually based their conversions on.
>
> Again, Chris could probably elaborate much further on the Westfalia
> conversion of the Vanagon than I could.
> --
> Jim Thompson
> 84 Westfalia 2.1 "Ole Putt"
> 73 K Ghia Coupe "Denise"
> 72 411 Station Wagon "Pug"
> oldvolkshome@gmail.com
> http://www.oldvolkshome.com
> **********************************
> On 12/15/06, Nathaniel Poole <npoole@telus.net> wrote:
>>
>> Can anyone tell me what year VW upgraded the interior of their
>> vanagons/westies? My '80 Riviera has a standard truck interior - rubber
>> floor mat, steel dash, plain vinyl seats. Later models have spinning
>> captain's chairs, carpeted interior, padded dash etc. What year(s) did
>> this
>> transition take place?
>>
>> Nathaniel