The buzz about VW’s Buzz triggers memories of its basic forerunner

By some standards, my 1976 Volkswagen bus was a bad car.

Purchased used in 1977, It was underpowered and slow. Blunt-nosed, it was hardly aerodynamic. Its heating system didn’t really give off heat, at least in the winter.

Despite all of that, I remember it as one of the best cars I’ve ever owned. The quirkier the vehicle, the better the memories, I guess.

Now I’m wondering if those memories will motivate me to purchase a descendant of the bus, Volkswagen’s all electric ID. Buzz. It’s coming to Europe this fall. A larger version is scheduled to arrive in the U.S. in 2024.

In the most recent New Yorker magazine, Jill Lepore, an historian and a vintage bus owner, writes that the Buzz “may be the most anticipated vehicle in automotive history.”

Anticipated, in part, because there are former bus owners like me. For perhaps 10 times the price we paid in the past (the Buzz will go for $40,000 and climbing), we can go back in time.

I worry, though. Pictures indicate that the Buzz will have shed many of the oddities and some of the character of its predecessor. Clearly, VW is targeting buyers who expect comfort and convenience, as well as cars that pollute far less than the gas-powered earlier versions. Go figure.

The Buzz has a sleek exterior and an interior loaded with touch-screen bells and whistles. The engine? Don’t touch it. “You won’t recognize the innards,” Lepore writes, “and you won’t be able to fix them.”

My son Ben remembers our bus as “iconic, a great car.” Great, yes, basic, as well.

The bus, aka a VW Transporter Type 2, sat seven people. The middle and rear seats were benches with backs. Hardly comfortable, but good enough.

Its electronics were limited to a radio. The stick shift came up from the floor and was tricky. “It required experience and patience, Reverse was terrible,” says Ben, who, like his brother Will transitioned from passenger to driver as the years flew by.

There was no air conditioning. There was no console between the front seats, so I fashioned a box with a sliding top and cup holders.

The car crossed the country twice, inching up and zipping down mountains. It went all around the state’s North Country in the late 1970s, as I tried to write my way into becoming a reporter.

Will took the bus to Indiana University in 1991 for his senior year, making it there and back with no problem. “It was a fun car to drive,” he recalls. “You were up high, and the angle of the steering wheel was almost horizontal.”

Not that the bus was worry free. Will remembers the gas pedal would become unhinged and suddenly drop to the car floor. Ben was driving it once when the muffler fell off, another time when the steering column became disconnected. I recall lying beneath the bus in the dead of the winter trying to string a new clutch cable from the front to the back. For reference, a copy of “How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manuel of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Complete Idiot” lay in the snow.

As time went on, and other cars came along, we drove the bus less and less. Sometime in the mid-1990s I put it up for sale.

A kid who wanted to tour the country following Phish showed up and found everything about the bus to be perfect. (Which it wasn’t, as a panel on the left side had detached from the car. Anyone sitting in the middle row could look down and see the road.)

The Phish kid asked me what I wanted for the car. I asked him what he had. He removed $325 from his wallet. I took it, and the car was gone, in good hands.

Thanks to their cult following, vintage VW buses in good shape are now going for thousands of dollars. I’d like to hope that our bus is rejuvenated and Phishing along, enjoying the open road, ready to beat the Buzz when that vehicle arrives and begins its own trip down memory lane.

Remarkable Rochesterians

A recent story in the Democrat and Chronicle by Bob Chavez reminds us how much G. Peter Jemison has done to raise awareness of the history of Native Americans in this area. Let’s add his name to the list of Remarkable Rochesterians.

G. Peter Jemison (1945-): From 1985 until his retirement in 2022, this artist and historian served as the site manager of the Ganondagan State Historic Site in Victor, which is dedicated to the story of Native Americans, especially the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). Under his watch, a Seneca Bark Longhouse, and later, a Seneca Art & Culture Center, were added to the site, which is on land occupied by the Seneca in the 17^th Century. A member of the Huron Clan of the Seneca Nation who grew up on the Cattaraugus Reservation, he continues to paint and to raise awareness of Haudenosaunee culture.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Volkswagen ID.Buzz triggers memories of its basic forerunner