>  The rear swing axle designs of the beetle, bay
> and splittie all offered problems for the inexperienced or ignorant driver

Bays were not swingaxle, used the basic Split suspendion and had an
added semitrailing arm. A Split with an added front swaybar, or a
later Split, handled very competently, with none of the rear-jacking
and gross (but not unsafe) oversteerr of the swaybarless 50s examples.
Those 50s vand would hovever handle very well with a decent load in
the back
if the tprsionbars were adjusted to bring the rear-wheel camber
unloaded to zero.

>  The high
> center of gravity in the bay and design exaggerated the roll under rear tire

The Bay was a more than competent handler, even on basic radials, and
I had real fun on twisty backroads, hitting 130kmh-plus on the short
straights and slowing only minimally for corners. It was a sporty
vehicle and the center of balance was not high. At 140kmh there was
slight looseness in the steering, but nothing serious.

>  The splitty couldn't go fast enough in stock form to be rollover
> prone, so safety was achieved through moderate performance.

With a 1600 added to the split-case trans, my 57 Split panelvan could
hit an easy 130kmh and was stable. Adjusting the rear camber helped
reduce the spectacular antics on hard cornering, and as I say, a load
kept the body cornering flat and she could, like a Bay, whix through
the twisties.

> As noted by Martin (Poppie?) Jagersand, the T3 or vanagon is actually a very
> safe design for a forward control vehicle as demonstrated in the technical
> paper on the safety design of the Vanagon in the files I have alluded to
> previously on Alistair's site.

The T3 is supposed to handle extremely well.
My only experience with this was in the 4 months I had my Caravelle GL
before its 5-speed failed. What I found was pig-understeer, certiainly
not what I'd read about! Tossing the iron V6 and fitting the Porsche
six hopefully will cure this unpleasant trait, and the Whiteline
swaybars front & rear with Konis snd low-profile 18" tires should make
it a winner... wish I could take it out arounf the Nuremburgring...
--
Andrew Grebneff
Dunedin, New Zealand
Fossil preparator
Mollusc, Toyota & VW van nut

<goose1047@gmail.com>