"improvements" is subjective.   While the majority of car buyers 'buy
into' whatever the latest technological widgets the manufacturers and the
government builds onto vehicles as 'improvement'...I don't.
    Personally I think 'simple' is the best improvement.  If you can take
some complex system out of a mechanism and  not diminish it's
functionality, that's an improvement.   Conversely, if you keep adding
systems without considering the consequences should that additional system
fail or function poorly, then you've made a 'diss-improvement'...(I
know...)

    I think fixing mistakes, things that were not quite right on previous
models, that IS improvement and VW did do some of that with the
vanagons...but they also did a lot of 'market-driven' widget adding...some
of which was quite counter to functionality...like the double square
headlight 'improvement' that most people fix by going backwards in time to
single ones that work well....

On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 9:39 AM, Higginbotham, David A. <
dhigginbotham@hazenandsawyer.com> wrote:

> I know that it is accepted that the later year vanagons are better than
> the earlier vanagons, why? Not wanting to open up a can of worms here, but
> I am curious what were the various improvements made to the vanagons
> between 1980 and 1991. Is there a comprehensive list somewhere that someone
> has compiled that lists these changes? I vaguely remember something
> mentioned about something like this here on the list a number of years ago
> but I have slept since then.
>
> David Higginbotham
> 82 Westy (back on the road WHOOHOOO!!)
> Silk Hope, NC
>