Another 65yr old here, though I still ride my bicycle and keep up with
the 20 & 30yr olds,  usually.

  My VW van ownership before this vanagon.....Limited to just one (of my
own) with a '57 South African 36hp Splittie panel...Way back in the
70s....It  had the fold-out front windshields.  During the 3-5 yrs I had
that, I was your Hippie Ski-bum, lived one whole winter in the van, in
Aspen. I drove it down the length of Baja before the road (s) were improved,
surfed from it up and down the California coast, had about 5 different
camper "floor plans"...all pretty crude.

  I got really good at timing the spark for altitude changes using a Zig-Zag
rolling paper between the points.  Driving that during winter in the
mountains....Especially when you had been sleeping inside it all night and
the interior ice build-up from me and my dog's breath put an inch of clear
ice on the windows inside.....pretty sick.
 I had a piece of fishing line connected to the accelerator cable and routed
to the package shelf just ahead of the shifter....On the rare occasions when
full throttle was not wanted, I could just tug on the line and make the
motor slow down....The throttle cable tube was usually so full of ice that I
regularly  drove around doing "power shifts"...The term "Power" being used
very loosely.

  I was actually glad to see the backside of that one....but now I look back
at it fondly. It did work pretty good...in all the basics...It started, it
went in the snow, it was easy to work on and frugal on gas.  It was roomy
inside yet small outside...

 For about the next 15yrs I was involved with many VW vans...and I was
usually pretty glad that someone else was owning them, even though I often
ended up fixing them.  At least I usually didn't have to pay....in money
anyhow. (many of my girlfriends, over the years, had Westies)

  For all those years between that old air cooled and about 4yrs ago, I
stayed interested in VW vans, but the air cooled ones....No matter how much
they were "supposed to" be better, they always seemed to be broken, cold,
slow, at least the ones I was seeing. ... Vanagons, they still 'intrigued
me'..especially the water cooled.

  When diesel fuel went past $3/gallon and filling my Ford F-250 4X4 began
to cost me over $100 each trip to the pump  (about a day's wages, in my
trade,  in 2000's dollars)...I decided to get 'serious' about Vanagons (or
something else that I could afford to put gas into)  and found my inline VW
powered one.  Me like!  It is much like my old Splittie should have
been....Cheap, warm, simple, dependable and speedy (for a VW van).  Decently
economical for a full sized vehicle capable of toting stuff around or taking
on adventures.
  Don Hanson