From this page: http://theautobahnsociety.com/Engine_main.htm
I offer this quote:
"There is a better way... in fact VW had the right idea and was quoted
in Popular
Mechanics (1980) introducing the Vanagon, they actually said that the
Vanagon was designed to use the inline 4, however brisk sales of the VW
Rabbit left them too few engines to go around, with factories producing as
many as possible the boxer was brought back."
I've got an I4 in my 84 Westy --- much better than the boxer in my opinion.

Cheers,
Doug

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 3:46 PM, Jens Jakob Andersen <jayjay@zorck.dk>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> We are trying to find out what happened inside the heads of Schults
> and Heinz (VW engineers that we cuss about when working on our cars
> ("That day Schultz said to Heinz over lunch "Fit, too tight a fit? No
> Heinz, we will place the bolt there - no problem -if people need to
> work on that part they will allways have taken the front half
> apart")) - on the day when they decided:
> "Lets convert the CU to water-cooled - it will be real easy, done
> quite fast, and a good stable conversion - instead of just using one
> of our great inline.-4 engines"
>
> So my basic question to this list -      does anyone know about why
> VW decided to create the WBX, instead of changing to inline-4 in 1983?
>
> Here is what I have found so far:
> "The switch to water-cooling for the boxer engines was made abruptly
> mid-year in 1983 because VW could no longer make the air-cooled
> engines meet emissions standards"
>
>
> Happy driving
>
> Jens Jakob
>

--
http://www.dougalcock.com