I believe I’ve made no secret of my affection for the Volkswagen Type 2 Microbus, a box on wheels with a tiny engine shoved down in the back corner. It’s something that started as a crude sketch of a workhorse machine needed to fill real postwar delivery demands, was engineered as a rational, economical solution to a specific problem, and somehow managed along the way to become one of the most iconic and characterful vehicles ever made. That’s part of why I was so excited to see the lovely very early Bus on display at the Petersen Museum in LA the night we crashed the Tesla Party, though I have to admit that seeing this old bus made me wonder about a question that’s not only completely irrelevant now, but is also about 70 years too late to matter. In short, the best kind of question! Let’s dig in!
First, I have to just say that the Petersen’s very early Microbus was really lovely. I mean, look at it:
Fantastic, right? So, this is a pre-1955 Type 2, which means it looks like this around back:
…and this is where my questions start, questions for which the only people who could probably have given me any sort of real answer are not just long dead, they’re long dead across an ocean, in Germany. Let me explain what I’m talking about. These old, pre-’55 buses are called barndoor buses not because of the side doors that actually do kind of open like barn doors, but because of that engine lid there, which is absolutely massive, like a barn door. Here’s what’s under there:
This is what makes me so confused about these early vans: this colossal engine room is such a terrible use of space and packaging, and everything else about the Type 2 design is so damn good about space utilization and packaging that I just can’t wrap my head around why these decisions were made.
Sure, the old upright-fan engine borrowed from the Beetle is kind of a tall package, but it’s not that tall, and making that huge tray for the spare above it sure doesn’t help anything. If you look at what the Barndoor bus is like on the inside, you can see that the huge, oversized box for engine, fuel tank, and spare tire sure commands a lot of room at the rear of the van:
You can also see from that picture of some of the first Type 2s that they sometimes didn’t even have rear windows, and almost none had any way to access the cargo area from the rear. An optional small opening rear hatch did exist, but was not common at all.
I mean, look at a cutaway of these early Type 2s:
That engine and tire storage room just takes up way too much space, needlessly. You’re not spending a night in there when you change the spark plugs, after all, are you?
Now, this does roughly keep with early Dutch VW importer Ben Pon’s original sketch that eventually became the Type 2 Transporter, but even Pon’s crude sketch seems to leave a bit more cargo room over the engine at the rear:
What confuses me is why the original buses were designed like this? I get that you had to stick the spare tire somewhere but shoving it over the engine (some even had it vertically in the engine bay) seems like the worst way to do it, considering what the van’s purpose was: to load and unload things and move them around.
They could have stuck the tire on the front (like many people did on their own) or underneath, like many vans and utility vehicles did, or on the side like a jeep, or, like they eventually did, behind the front seat bulkhead. I just can’t wrap my head around why the solution they went with was acceptable, because it really feels like the worst solution they could come up with.
In fact, Volkswagen’s engineers and designers even seemed to realize that there were better ways to do it, because even before they redesigned the engine/tire packaging setup in 1955, the ambulance versions of the Type 2 solved the issue completely:
Look! They re-sized the engine room to something more reasonable, and as a result found they had plenty of room for a stretcher, complete with a drop-down door to get it in and out. It’s so much better! And, finally, it must have dawned on someone at VW that, hey, why don’t we just build them all like we build the ambulance one, and get about twice the cargo area and a way to load it from the rear? So, in 1955, that’s what happened.
The spare got its own fun little angled cubby behind the front seats, and that load floor dropped by over a foot, and there was now a rear hatch. Look at the difference:
Honestly, I can’t think of another car that has so dramatically increased its cargo room without any dimensional changes to its bodywork. Maybe one of you out there will think of something, but when it comes to just re-shuffling stuff inside the envelope of a vehicle, this is a pretty massive improvement.
Look how much room that rear area over the engine got since the re-working:
That’s a lot of space back there, and the hatch is incredibly useful! Also, is this the only time an improvement to an ambulance version was incorporated into a mass-market vehicle?
I’m still baffled why the lower floor and rear hatch wasn’t part of the design from the get-go. Even if, say, cost of a hatch was too much, the re-located spare and more reasonably-scaled engine box should have been part of the design from the start.
I’m sure there were reasons, but I have yet to find anything that actually explains it, and, as I said, I think I’m a few decades too late to learn the real truth from the source.
I suppose, given the date, I’ll just be thankful that VW did figure it out by 1955, and leave it at that, a beautiful mystery.
Not sure it counts, but the C3 Corvette opened up a ton of rear cargo space in going from the vertical rear window with buttresses to the big glass canopy late in the run.
I’m in product development, and sometimes I have to deal with engineers who just… are so conservative. My guess is Hans was telling the designers “NEIN VE MUST NEED MORE VOLUME VOR ENGINE KOOLING!” and he’d been at the company a while so people tried arguing with him but his ego and sway, combined with the rust to just get something out the door and into production, let him have his way.
Later in the program, when they designed the ambulance, they said “okay well let’s TRY it, Hans” so they mocked it up, found no problem, and poof, they could adjust the design.
I wanna know why a tail light fetishist like you didn’t focus on the dual chmsl on a pre 1986 vehicle?
Seems like a missed opportunity, maybe discuss it a your next visit to a tail light bar.
Well, any owner could get the same benefit by leaving the spare at home.
My completely-uninformed-by-real-knowledge speculation is that we are doing a little bit of Monday Morning quarterbacking here without considering the conditions of the time. The beetle had a long engineering development and refinement cycle before the war, but the van was a very ad hoc response to a customer request and done in the pretty dark (for Germany) post war years. VW didn’t have much money and (I believe) didn’t have a very big engineering staff, because, well, the war ate some many men. So there were not hundreds of engineers (and zero computers) to make a sophisticated design.
Additionally VW had no way of knowing if the Van was going to be a success or failure – essentially it was built to humor a good customer – so they would have been foolish to extend a lot of engineering effort on it. The big engine box is
a. What the customer drew – if he’s happy, we’re happy.
b Guarantees good structural rigidity in what is otherwise a sheet metal shed parked on top of a beetle floor pan.
Send it.
The spare tire inside the engine bay is, I believe, another response to the times. Tires were expensive and an exposed spare is easily stolen. In the USSR back in the dark ages, drivers used to even take their windshield wiper arms off the cars at night to protect them.
Now later as VW grew, the economy recovered, and demand for vans proved itself, it made sense to throw some money, talent, and time into building a better van.
Just my two pfennigs.
It’s somewhat deceptive since it’s the cubic space that’s been reallocated. In the barn door models, the fuel tank is above the engine and the bulkhead/firewall is further back. In later models, the fuel tank is moved down and forward, over the transaxle. The tradeoff is a bigger raised area and a (slightly) smaller main floor area. It really depends on what you’re moving, boxes or people.
You’re telling me the German word for ‘ambulance’ is ‘krankenwagen’? I don’t know why they have a reputation as such dour people while speaking one of the most hilarious languages out there. I mean the word for ‘journey’ is ‘fahrt’. Are we sure this isn’t some sort of centuries long troll operation?
Side note, I really hope at one point the band Journey played Berlin and came out to a crowd tens of thousands strong all chanting “FAHRT! FAHRT! FAHRT!”.
Air Sickness is Luftkrankheit. Almost sounds celebratory.
I think VW were just amazed by their own ingenuity and how much space the original barndoor version had, compared to most others on the market at that time, so really using all the available space in the best way just wasn’t a priority. You also see those quite silly spare tyre shelves in Volvos and Morrises from the same time.
Using all space available wasn’t a thing before the Mini in 1959.
When the flat Type 3 engine was “invented” in 1960 they should have stuck that in the bus, and relocated the fuel tank. It took almost 20 years before a flatter engine was put in the T3 in 1979…
Think about how these would have been used in a city or town environment. You drive up to the curb, park, open the right doors and load/unload from the right side. There was no need to load/unload from the rear. There might be a car parked back there! The solution was good enough until somebody realized that it could be better.
Grew up in a 66 (many window) and sunroof Bus. Carried our family of 7 to Colorado from Minnesota and back several times. Crossing Nebraska in either direction felt like being stuck in some kind of time warp thing. Once in 1967 we were leaving on one such trip. Heading down the Hwy near our house our kitten decided to jump out the sunroof at 55mph. (flat out) My old man cussed like a sob and turned the damn bus around at the next exit. Went back about a mile and found the damn cat walking along the shoulder! That was a surreal moment to say the least. We had that cat forever but the bus for only 2 years, then got a new one also with a sunroof. The cat never tried that shit again.
Seem to remember seeing some of these examples in Minn., Wis., Mich. from the 1955 to 67 years and with various window, cargo, door configurations. Back then my Grandpa bought a new 1961 Transporter for his plumbing business in the UP. (Wish I could post the cool photo of him with it) My memory is that back then you could still special order the various VW Bus configurations direct from Germany and since they all came from Germany then it was like no big deal. YMMV?
You nailed it in the open. It “was engineered as a rational, economical solution to a specific problem”. The problem just wasn’t maximum interior cargo volume.
Thanks Jason, now I’ll be up all night wondering!
I can think of a couple reasons for this:
1.) ease of assembly. the beltline is a natural point to cross brace, and stampings are simple. Budget or time constraints might have led the engineers to a quick and dirty solution.
2.) genuine utility as a cargo van. having a flat floor and a vertical wall will prevent boxes from shifting.
“this colossal engine room is such a terrible use of space and packaging”
That space isn’t wasted! That’s where my hands and the socket wrench go!
You see a waste of interior room, I see a huge gift for serviceability. When I saw that picture, my eyes widened with excitement at just how easy it would be to work on that thing. It’s like when my fiancée’s uncle showed me the engine bay of his GTO. I could practically stand in there, whereas accessing certain things near the back of my Miata’s engine requires a lot of contortions and a moderate amount of blood sacrifice. There’s nothing in the way! How is that even possible?
Old cars, man. They may have needed more work, but damn if the work doesn’t look easy to do.
Given that the engineers were initially reluctant to have buses with sunroofs (& attendant camper conversions) because they thought the loss of several roof crossmembers would lead to too much flex in the chassis & bodywork it might be that they chose the tall firewall as a means of ensuring rigidity on account of the greater amount of support afforded by the tall walls being welded to the sides of the body? And when they saw how well the krankenwagens and the sunroof buses worked with such compromises they went ahead with the changes across the board in ’55? Surely there are children & grandchildren whose ancestors worked on the early buses that could provide answers based on what they were told by said ancestors? (Cf. the charming video on Jay Leno’s Garage where Leno interviewed the granddaughter of the founder of the White Motor Company.)
It looks like the sole purpose of that little engine is to warm the spare tire.
What’s interesting is that the ’49-’50 version had the spare mounted vertically in the engine compartment.
As to why the large engine compartment, I’d say it was a combination of not wanting any intrusion into the main cargo area, which the ’55 and up version did, mounted behind the front seats. It was designed first as a cargo van. The small area above the engine really wasn’t going to be used for cargo. But when they decided to offer passenger versions, then yes, the opportunity to put luggage up there became a limitation.
And the front bucket seat version (7-8 passenger) put the spare in the rear on the side, in a well. That actually would have been the ideal configuration all along, as it did not intrude into the main cargo area and offered a walk-through aisle.
Not possible to attach images to comments?
The answer is so simple you looked right past it. Which engine would you rather work on?
Tha earlier version was nice and roomy for the mechanic to do his work.
You’re welcome.
This would be my first guess. My dad always had beetles and went on and one about how easy they were to work on. In HS my friend bought a bus and my dad said we were on our own because he wasn’t going to try and squeeze himself into that engine bay.
VW microbus ambulance – when hours count.
Hopefully the hospitals are all downhill.
You ain’t kidding. The car we had when I was a baby/toddler/young child was a 1964 whatever the cheapest model T1 was in puke/pea soup green, and we got passed up by semis going across the mountains east of LA. That’s embarrassing, especially when you remember how much less power those semis had than modern ones. We were literally in single digit mph.
As a former Corvair owner, I will always be baffled by any engineer who places the spare over the engine in an air-cooled vehicle. In a Corvair, if you plan to keep your spare in the factory mount you better underinflate it. Otherwise they are known to burst and send the pieces into your fan for some julienne treatment. Maybe the large space was there to provide more airflow to the engine? It seems like they figured out the mistake quickly enough and fixed it… unlike the Corvair which continued to mount the spare over the engine in both generations.
Yeah my first thought was also that it’s a cooling solution. Either to provide more airflow around the engine or because the walls of the engine compartment would get too hot if they were closer to the engine. But I guess the ambulance setup and the later redesign wouldn’t have been possible then.
1980s Subarus had the spare tire over the engine as well. Maybe the designers were thinking, “Hey, that flat-4 engine frees up SO much room under the hood, that we HAVE to use it for something!”
I remember when my mom was shopping for a new car in ’87, a Subaru dealer also said that the tire would act as additional crash protection, since it would deform and absorb some of the impact. I don’t think that was ever in any of the official Subaru literature, lol. (Apart from that, the Subaru sales guys were way better than anyone else we dealt with, they were low-pressure and seemed to genuinely enjoy the cars.)
Anticipating the Berlin Wall the designers left enough room to smuggle a person
Hey Torch, check at early citroen GS vs 80’s citroen GSA trunk situation.
“Honestly, I can’t think of another car that has so dramatically increased its cargo room without any dimensional changes to its bodywork.”
When Stow N Go was an option on the Dodge Grand Caravan, it would have made a huge difference over the models without it.
I assume you’re talking about when it was first rolled out, on the 4th gen vans? From ’08 on, you got the floor cubbies no matter what seating configuration you had.
The pre-1955 layout is exactly like Ben Pon’s sketch: the engine bay goes up to the beltline. Ben’s sketch does not have windows in the back, but the top of the engine box is exactly at the height of the front window’s bottom edge. Just the windows in the sketch are taller than on the actual car.
And I think that’s it: they built it this way because that was what the sketch was like. Only later did they realize that deviating from that gives you extra cargo space.
Space efficiency in German vans is kinda my thing (check out the user name). I have a guess: Because this was first generation and VW ran out of time for engineering, they called it a day and put the top of the engine compartment (the fireceiling?) at the beltline. It seems too much of a coincidence the “fireceiling” matches the beltline exactly.
I hasten to add my experience with VW busses consists of riding in one, once.
Exactly, the beltline is the secret.
On any project you have certain key priorities, and a budget and a deadline and management with their own priorities. And at the time it was conceived they had perhaps a limited, focused vision for the vehicle. So not everything get done the best way, just an adequate way.
If the goal was simply greater capacity than a Beetle without creating an entirely new platform, well, they certainly got that with the original version.