All About Japan Autos

Dust off your bell bottoms and grab some granola: if the chief designer over at Volkswagen has his way, it’ll be the Age of Aquarius all over again.

Klaus Bischoff, Volkswagen’s design chief designer, told the UK’s Auto Express “I would not be doing my job at Volkswagen properly if I was not thinking of bringing back the Camper.” Known as the Camper overseas, the Volkswagen Bus is another quirky, iconic design that helped seal VW into American consumers’ minds. But, you may not want to bring up buying a new VW bus at the next commune budget meeting. As Autoblog points out, “This rumor has come around before,” however, “the New Beetle’s ten-year run might help underscore the business case for a revival.”

VW did show a microbus concept at the 2011 Detroit Auto Show, but decided not to make the van because of the prohibitive cost. As iconic as the VW bus is, the van business hasn’t been all that great for Volkswagen lately. The VW Routan minivan is simply a rebadged Dodge Grand Caravan/Chrysler Town & Country. In 1993 and from 1999 to 2003, Volkswagen sold the Eurovan in the U.S. to tepid consumer response.

Jalopnik has some advice for VW, if they decide to get back into the van business: “My unsolicited advice to Volkswagen is to forget crash standards and just start making a slightly updated version of the pre 1968 Bus, maybe with a little, a lot more power?” Crash standards aside, they add “one can only hope [VW] keeps the original in mind as much as possible in the design process.”

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