In the last episode of Torch Drives I drove a pretty obscure weird, underpowered car, and it was a blast. This time, the car is pretty much the opposite of obscure. It’s not necessarily a common sight on modern roads, but it’s one of that small set of cars that have transcended their initial roles to become something truly iconic. The Volkswagen Type 2 Transporter, called variously a Bus, Hippy Bus, Microbus, Station Wagon (yep), Clipper (yep again), Bulli, VW Van, or whatever is one of those cars that almost anyone can identify, whether they give a brace of BMs about cars or not. It’s not like the story of this car hasn’t been told a million times before, but you know what? It’s still a good story. And old VW buses are still a blast to drive and just be in, not feeling quite like anything else on the road, their own peculiar, idiosyncratic thing. So, when Volkswagen offered me a few hours with their lovely ’67 21-window Bus, of course I leapt at it, smacked into the side, and then thanked them and grabbed the keys.
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You can click WATCH MORE and it’ll show you the full YouTube video – MH]
There’s a lot of interesting details about the origin story of the Type 2. We all know the story about how Ben Pon, VW’s Dutch importer, saw the little plattenwagen factory runabout truck-things that were crudely built by factory workers, and how that humble but useful machine inspired him to draw his famous sketch of that other humble but useful machine, a machine that was desperately needed in postwar Europe to get economy going again by moving stuff around, which, as any economist will tell you, is the backbone of any economy.
What’s less noted is that, really, the Bus was the first actual Volkswagen. Now, settle down, I know the Beetle came first, but the Beetle started life as the KdF-Wagen, part of one of the Third Reich’s all-too-rare non-horrific genocidal plans. The Beetle wasn’t born a Volkswagen as we know the company today, but was adopted into the family after the war, after the British control of the Wolfsburg factory, when the modern Volkswagen company was born.
The Bus, on the other hand, was the first project to be undertaken by the new postwar Volkswagen, and when it came out in 1950, it was the first vehicle to be developed by the Volkswagen that we know today.
You know what else is fascinating about the early development of the Bus? Despite everything your eyes tell you, VW actually paid attention to aerodynamics. The first prototypes of the Type 2, known then as Type 29, were really crude and angular, with no curvature at all to the cab:
VW took their prototype the wind tunnel at the nearby University of Braunschweig, where I presume the wind tunnel was used to extensively test the aero qualities of liverwurst, and were informed that the aerodynamics of the Type 2 were terrible, just terrible. Like, unusable, especially considering the engine they had to use at the time was the 1100cc 25 hp unit from the Beetle. Something had to get fixed, so the clever Braunschweigers and VW’s people re-designed the Bus into something a bit more rounded and wind-friendly while still retaining the spaciousness of a box on wheels.
The result was a drag ratio of about 0.42 Cd (that may be for the later “bay window” version, but it’s close enough for my point here) which is shockingly good (I mean, all things considered) and a reminder that aerodynamics is hard and not at all obvious, because the sleek, sporty, low Jaguar E-Type has a Cd of 0.44! That’s worse! How is that possible?
There’s lots of interesting details about the Microbus, and I hope the genuine delight I feel driving one of these things comes across in the video, because it’s genuine. Sure, it’s absurd Boomer nostalgia that has driven prices of these up to the point of inaccessibility for most of us, and that’s lousy, but it’s worth taking a moment and revisiting the old Bus to get a reminder of why these things became icons. It’s one of those cases where a singular focus on a job to be done, an unrelenting lock on utility somehow transformed into charm and character, unplanned and unbidden but desperately real.
Oh, and forgive me if the end feels a little like an endorsement for the new ID.Buzz. I like the ID.Buzz and I meant what I said, but we were late returning the Microbus and VW’s people were right there, so I wanted to, you know, give them a little something. Take it for what you will.
Another thing to consider about the Bus; in many ways, it was the lone successful example of a concept of a “futuristic car” from the 1930s or so. Cars like the Stout Scarab or Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion car were all about one-box designs with rear engines and a lot of often-flexible space. The first company to really realize this general concept was Volkswagen, with the Type 2, even if it was done for simple space-utilization and utilitarian reasons instead of noble utopian goals.
We take them for granted now, but the VW Bus absolutely earned its iconic status. The next time you see one puttering around, try to look at it with fresh eyes. That shouldn’t be too hard to do, since it likely won’t be going all that fast.
One problem with the bus, at least the 1973 we had, is that it had both sloppy steering and caught the wind. I remember driving on the highway having to steer into the wind to keep it in its lane. I’ve never driven a car since that I had to do that, at least that degree. And yes, as a person who grew up in Type II’s for about 20 years, I find the love and nostalgia for them highly overrated.
Actually, the vw bus was not the first vw powered bus. That credit goes to Tempo who put the engine in the front – but behind the transaxle which had the front bench seat above it. There were air exit vents right behind the front doors.
VW cut their access to engines off when the bus was being developed, so Tempo switched to a 2 stroke engine, then a water cooled inline Austin engine and then Mercedes diesels – eventually becoming Hanomag and then a part of Mercedes itself.
Always thought VW should have copied (or bought) Tempo’s FWD design as it gave much more room in back. But then there would not have been a walk thru option since the engine was there.
I kinda hate that everyone uses Cd to measure drag when writing about cars. It’s not your fault, but it’s confusing; it’d be like if we never quoted total horsepower, and only horsepower per liter. We’d all be like “wow, the Merc AMG 45 has way more power than a Bugatti Veyron!”
I can’t even seem to find a name for that measurement.
I like horsepower per litre, it tells you whether an engine has been designed by people who cared or not. Or whether I want to buy a ten year old one.
Anything under 60bhp/l is just lazy. Anything over 100bhp/l is a worry, unless it’s a motorcycle or a Honda, or both.
My current fleet are at 100bhp/litre, 115bhp/l, 150bhp/l and 172bhp/l. Only one of those has a turbo, and it’s probably not the one you’re thinking.
Sorry, I forgot my point: so Cd is how clever the body shape is. Any idiot can get a good CdA by making it smaller (like the E-type).
Ok you got me there.I have long known the teardrop ideal is myth,and the devil is very much in the details.
But still,it beats an E type?? Impressive
(and yes,frontal area will ruin the numbers,but still cool)
BTW does anyone remember a mercedes (i think) concept van with body shapes borrowed from the Box fish?
The Bionic concept.
https://sprink.carinecsq.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Merz-1.jpg
Way to many adds.
Like at least one other person commented I am getting ads every 30 seconds or so. It would also be nice if the video didn’t have to be on the screen to play. I like to listen in while reading the rest of the article, or god forbid, doing work.
I’d like to point out that the drag coefficient also depends on the frontal area used for the front of the object.
(See Jack Langelaan‘s comment for a better writeup)
Is there supposed to be a link or clickable image that plays the embedded video? If so, I don’t see it at all running the current version of the Opera browser under Windows 11, not “below” or anywhere else. Unless I missed it somehow, which isn’t totally impossible.
Try turning off your adblocker. The video player didn’t even show up for me until I did that. (Vivaldi, Linux.)
Other than whatever’s built into Opera itself, I have no Ad Blocker installed currently, but that is a great idea I should have thought of Aaron. 🙂 I’ll get around to seeing if the embedded videos show up while using another browser. I only switched to Opera instead of Chrome just because I felt like it wasn’t ideal to spend ALL of my time online using Google’s preferred surveillance system… no need to make it even easier for them. 😉
Kudos on your choice of Vivaldi/Linux btw… I was a fervent user of Ubuntu Linux for years, and am only in Windows 11 now because it came installed on this Asus Zenbook 14, and shockingly, it runs fast and fine w/o any third-party antivirus stuff installed (I just have Malwarebytes installed, but nothing else). I love many Linux distributions though… Ubuntu, Mint, #!, etc… they’re all great! 🙂
On FB marketplace right now here in Houston there is no less than a dozen 1965 to 1984 microbuses- all from Brazil. There’s a cottage industry for importing these things, putting in new interiors and selling them- they range in price from a decent one at 10-13k to over 85-90k for a 21 window. I would love to have one, but the safety and AC issues (hello Houston!) limit the practicality. Torch, If you really want one- you could get a workable version for under 10k and make it your own. There appears to be 2 importers here that sell all of them as they are listed by the same 2 people.
Interesting that VW got the cd so low, especially with such a tall design.
Video player works ok here on Chrome. However, every 25 seconds I got a skippable ad. Not sure what was up with that?
Thanks, Torch!
Drag coefficient is only part of the story… you need to know the reference area (I’m an airplane guy, we usually use wing area… car folks usually use frontal area). But… no one (especially the folks advertising cars) ever tells you the reference area (this is one of my many pet peeves). They just say “Look at our awesome car with a drag coefficient of 0.28” (or whatever).
Drag force is
D=0.5*rho*v^2*CD*S
where rho is air density, v is speed relative to the air, CD is drag coefficient and S is the reference area. The power you need to overcome air drag is
P=D*v
(which explains why fuel consumption gets really bad when you go 80 mph… that cube on the speed hits you hard).
And we can see that both drag coefficient CD and reference area S are equally important… I could have a little car with CD=0.3 and a Mack truck with a CD=0.3 and the Mack truck will have a lot more drag force to deal with, because of the bigger frontal area.
And now we can cue the clever marketing person who says “Hmmm… if I use a bigger reference area I can claim a much lower CD. Maybe I should use the surface area of the highway I’m driving on as my reference area.”
“P=D*v^3
(which explains why fuel consumption gets really bad when you go 80 mph… that cube on the speed hits you hard).”
Is this correct?
Hi!
I wrote P=D*v… since D=0.5*rho*v^2*S*CD we have power proportional to v^3:
gathering all the v s together:
P = 0.5*rho*S*CD*v^3
Best,
Jack
Yes you did. My bad.
I wanted to edit my reply with some more stuff that I think is interesting (maybe someone else also thinks it’s interesting, maybe not 🙂 ) but then it said it was too late to edit. So here it is!
The *aerodynamic* drag force goes with v^2. The other drag terms are different. For example, rolling resistance is often written as
D_roll = C_r * N
where N is the normal force (for a car on a flat road, this is the weight of the car) and C_r is the coefficient of rolling resistance. For a “normal” car tire on dry concrete C_r is about 0.01 (this will depend on tire inflation plus some other things).
The power required at the wheel is the sum of power needed to overcome drag and the power needed to overcome rolling resistance:
P_wheel = (D_aero + D_roll)*v
Multiplying this out we get
P_wheel = C_r*N*v + 0.5*rho*S*CD*v^3
So the power we need to overcome aerodynamic drag goes with v^3 and the power we need to overcome rolling friction goes with v… that’s why fuel consumption gets really big at high speeds.
The power required by the engine is the power at the wheel plus the power we need to keep the engine running plus the power we need to run all the other stuff in the car (AC is usually the biggest thing here). And then the fuel consumption (in gallons per hour or your favorite unit of volume per time) is dependent on the energy content of the fuel and the thermodynamic efficiency of the engine.
You can calculate the fuel consumption per distance travelled… and that will show you the speed that maximizes your mpg. Things are a little more complicated when you start including gearing and the fact that the engine efficiency varies with torque and rpm, but the basic principles are the same.
The same thing applies if you have a battery electric car… the only difference is that instead of looking at a fuel flow rate you look at power drawn from the battery… and electric power is volts*current.
Best,
Jack
“So the power we need to overcome aerodynamic drag goes with v^3 and the power we need to overcome rolling friction goes with v… that’s why fuel consumption gets really big at high speeds.”
The good news is that cube works in our favor when harnessing power from moving air. At least till the wind turbine blows up.
More video feedback: The framerate, resolution, and audio/video sync are noticeably worse on the native player compared Youtube. I tried on desktop versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Edge (no adblockers or addins for any of them) and mobile Firefox for kicks, and they all are kinda juddery, pixelated, and a little asynchronous. No issues on YouTube either on mobile or a desktop browser for the same video.
Not that those issues matter. I will forever put up with potato-quality video to get my fix of Torch Drives if it also means sending more ad revenue your way vs some tech oligopoly.
Another issue that I have to put up with is the incessant automatic download of weird YouTube file called youtube-placeholder.mp4 (15 kb) every time I open the articles that have the embedded YouTube video. This issue happens on Firefox every time and on Chrome and Safari once in a while.
It is so annoying and irritating!
I sent the enquiry to the Autopian and got the crappy response, telling me the equivalent of “so what?”…
Who responded that way? Can you email me? matt@theautopian.com
I see the exchange. This has nothing to do with the video player as it predates the video player. I think this might be an issue with our compliance software, giving the timing.
Your responsiveness to reader issues and questions is off the charts. I have no idea where you find the time to do this much giving-a-shit outside of editorial duties, but it’s appreciated.
My first VW bus was a ’64 Deluxe sunroof walk-thru bus. Utterly reliable with the downside that max speed was 54 MPH. I could load up 5 kayaks and friends and go kayaking and do a shuttle down some knarly roads. Then I could load up 6 soccer team mates for a car pool to the game. One time we came across a broken down vehicle in the middle of an intersection. The owner was amazed when half a dozen people poured out of my bus to push them to the side of the road. Even though I was in Seattle, the sliding sunroof never leaked, and it made loading and unloading kayaks really easy. I miss that bus, and if I had kept it instead of the ’67 squareback I still have, I would have loads more available retirement funds available if sold today. I’ve had several additional busses after that, but that first one holds the best memories. Well, the ’76 camper that we drove for 20k miles on our honeymoon held, uh, different memories.
VW bus tidbits. The spare tire in a walkthru bus was located in an indent on top of the left side of the engine shelf taking up space inside the main area, but you could walk thru from front to back. The non-walkthru was the one Torch drove.