It's a 1960 Kombi, all original, with just 34,763 miles on it.  The paint, interior, rubber, glass, seats, panels, everything inside and out is original with the exception of the engine which would have originally been a Bastard 40hp.  The original owner, a old German man who lived just a few houses away from me when I was growing up here in San Diego, pulled a head stud on the Bastard engine while driving it in Texas back in 1967.  He brought the Bus to a VW service and they swapped in a '66 Beetle 1300cc longblock and he was back on the road.  The funny thing is that the engine probably has less miles on it than the Bus itself.  The Bus had around 30,000 miles on it when it blew the Bastard.  The '66 Beetle engine was only a year old when it was swapped in.  Most cars cover less than 15,000 miles in a years time.

The story of the Bus is a good one so I figure it's worth telling.  The old guy bought the Bus back in 1966 from the original owner in Anaheim, California.  He brought it home to San Diego and used it as his daily commuter to his job as an engineer for Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical just a short distance from his home in University City.  In 1972 he was in the middle of doing a brake job on the Bus in his garage.  He got into a fight with his wife and the fight escalated to the point that he packed up his stuff and left the house, leaving the Bus exactly as it was, up on jackstands, drums off, wheels laying on the ground, hubcaps flipped upside down with the lug bolts in them, etc.  He later divorced his wife and moved to France.  

   

This was in February of 1972 when I was just 3 months old.  My family moved to San Diego in 1975 and we lived just a few houses away from where the Kombi was "entombed" in the garage down the street.  For all the years when I grew up, I saw that Kombi in the garage.  The old lady still lived there and almost never opened that garage for anything.  Once in a long while I'd get a glimpse of the Bus.  When I was looking for my first car when I was 16 I approached the old lady and she explained that it belonged to her ex-husband and he didn't want to sell it.  I tried every approach you can imagine for literally years.  I tried to bribe the wife and son to get the husband to sell, I told them to tell me a "huge" price, and then add something on top of that and I'd be back from the bank in 5 minutes with their cash.  I had to have this Kombi.  Every couple of years the old guy would come back and visit his son and tend to his multiple properties he owned around San Diego.  Those were my "windows of opportunity" the way I saw it.  I was in what I'd consider "serious pursuit" of this Bus for 11 years.  When I was absolutely serious about paying real money for it.  I always got excuses from the old guy.  "I don't have the time right now...", "I don't want to sell it not running...", and my favorite "I need to finish the brakes...".  As many times as I told him that I'd take the Bus, non-running, not registered, exactly as it sat, he refused and postponed the deal.  I finally got him to commit to a time to sell.  He said he planned to have the time in a "couple months" and would be ready to finally sell it to me then.  I was absolutely going to make him stick to his word, I'd been watching this Bus for decades in the garage, wanting it literally since I was a toddler.  I marked the day on the calendar and called at 2 months.  He returned my call and we played phone tag for a few days.  Suddenly I didn't get any calls back.  I left a couple messages and finally got ahold of someone.  His son answered the phone and was very upset when I asked for Bill.  He asked who was calling and I told him it was Brendan and I was calling to talk to Bill about the Bus.  He remembered me from the neighborhood and was very upset. It turns out that he had discovered his Dad after he passed away from a heart attack earlier that morning.  Talk about your awkward situations where you feel terrible, this took that cake.  I expressed my condolences and was just dumbfounded as I'd just spoken to him a few days earlier.  

Now those of you who know me and what a freak about Buses I am should know that I was experiencing "mixed" emotions about Bill's death.  I was very genuinely bummed that the old guy passed away but I was also excited as hell that the Bus would have to be moving soon too and I was the buyer, with cash in hand, in the right place at the right time.  I left my number with the son and told him to give me a call when he was ready to sell the Bus and I'd be over with cash right away.  A month later I got a phone call from the son saying that there were now "several interested buyers" on the Bus.  It seems he told some people about it and as you can imagine a "my Dad has this old VW that has been in the garage for the last 30 years..." story could raise an eyebrow to anyone who has a clue about old cars.  I was as pissed as I've ever been in my life.  Bill and I had a deal that I would buy the Bus, he passed away, so the son was now in charge.  He told me it would be mine till some other people spoke up.  Now he was planning on having an "auction".  Immediately I'm thinking "who the hell is gonna be there?  what do they know?  how much are they going to be willing to pay?"  I rounded up my cash, sold off a load of parts I'd been collecting, I was serious, I was gonna win for sure.  Months passed and he kept postponing.  "Oh, I'm too busy to do it now, next month..."  I'd call on the deadline and get put off again.  One night the son called me up and asked me if I'd be interested in "some parts" that are in the garage as well.  I had never seen any parts so I had no idea what he was talking about.  He said that there were some engines and other parts.  I asked what kind of engines and he said he didn't know but he thought that one was a 1200cc. 

 

I went over with a good buddy and the first thing we saw was a '58 Bus 36hp Engine sitting in the corner.  That was a good sign.  There were several boxes on the shelves that were full of very early VW parts.  I dug in and found almost all mechanical parts, some NOS, and nothing newer than 1960.  Everything was 36hp or earlier.  I found what looked to be a 36hp carb until I noticed it didn't have a accelerator pump and had "26VFIS" on the side.  25hp carb!  There was a 383 flattop distributor in the same box.  A box full of NOS looking crank start breast tins, an NOS EMPI aircleaner, a bag full of crank start nuts, a box full of very early tranmission parts, a NOS 36hp Bus Carb, 25hp heads, loads of 36hp heads, several 36hp cases, 25hp pistons and cylinders, several early cranks, rods, etc.  Then the funniest timecapsule to be found in the bunch was a homemade engine starting stand that the old guy made.  It was a 1951 Smooth Case/Full Crashbox trans casing that had been gutted and had a 36hp longblock mounted to it.  It was all wired up with a home light switch to stop and start it.  The bellhousing had never been ground which meant that he could have only run 25hp, 36hp, and early 40hp engines on it!  Talk about funny.  Anyway, the box of trans parts ended up being the rest of the parts to the Full Crash Trans.  I put on my best poker face and tried to act like I wasn't excited.  I showed up with a very generous amount of cash in hand and tried to buy all of the parts and the Kombi in one package.  He refused and stuck to his auction idea.  I was pissed.  He showed me all of this stuff and wasn't willing to sell anything, even when I was ready to pay a generous sum.  A week later he called me and said "well, I'm not finding the time to do this auction and you seem to have the most interest so I've decided on a price for the Bus and the parts but you have to take everything in one package deal."  I wasn't prepared for this kind of announcement so my heart started beating.  He told me the price, I couldn't believe my ears (it was less than what I was going to give him the week before) and I immediately paused as if to sound as though I wasn't excited.  I had the quick thought that if I sounded excited, he'd reconsider since he wasn't a man of his word.  I asked him if that was as good as he could do and he said Yes.  I told him I'd take it all and would be over in the morning with the cash.  We did the deal and I ended up buying everything including the Kombi for 1/3 of what I was willing to pay for just the Kombi alone.  Bottom line, I saw that Bus since I was a toddler,  pursued it seriously for 11 years, played my cards right, and now I own the nicest original Bus I could ever imagine owning.  It has just 34,763 miles and was last registered in 1971.  It's now 32 years later and it's dusted off, tuned up, and running around San Diego again in the hands of the biggest Bus pervert it could ever find.