Peace, Love, & the VW Bus
The story of a boxy legend.
"The hippie movement fell in love with the bus for a few reasons," says
McKeel Hagerty, classic car market expert and the CEO of Hagerty
Insurance. "It was cheap to maintain, easy to work on, and big enough to
live in."
The VW microbus was great at many things, but keeping up with traffic
wasn't one of them. The first models could carry nine passengers but had
engines that delivered a mere 25 horsepower. Now, the bus was deeply
geared to make the most of those horses, but even when power improved to
40, it was still really slow. On the twisty, narrow German backroads,
that was perhaps not problem. But not here on the open roads of the USA.
A typical six-cylinder engine in a 1950s American sedan had more than
four times the power of the VW.
The upside is that the classic Volkswagen four-cylinder engines have
plenty of aftermarket support. There are catalogs of speed parts
available.
(PopularMechanics.com)
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