Thanks for all the replies guys, very much appreciated. In the spirit of this thread being a bit of a blog I thought I'd post the first part of my adventure...
The Viewing
Having spent months searching for a Westfalia to replace my deluxe yielding no results I finally stumbled across a California import which had found its way to Holland. The bus is very solid, original (bar the odd panel) and reasonably priced. Yes, I could perhaps save a little money importing directly from the US, however most either required too much work, or were newly painted and had a price to match - I had a budget. I also liked the idea that I could view the bus rather than trust a seller in the US.
I emailed the seller, Barry, and after getting an excellent response, hundreds of pictures and videos, as well as around 20 positive responses from his previous customers I planned a date to go over and view the bus.
5am. Bleary eyed and groggy, I boarded the easy jet flight to Amsterdam.
10am. I was greeted at the airport by Barry who had come to pick me up.
We arrived at his house around 30 minutes later where he has a large barn type extension.
Inside was his workshop, with a latebay on the ramp and his splitty behind. If you walk around the split screen there is another large room that I forgot to take a picture of and has his fleet of latebays he rents out to his fellow countrymen. It was an amazing collection.
We then went to another storage area where I was greeted by 7 buses, including mine, hiding in the corner.
I spent a good while looking around, though ultimately there was little need as thanks to Barry's honest description and countless photos, nothing was unexpected about the bus. I took it for a test drive.
I sat on the rock and roll bed, took everything in and realised this was actually the first time I had sat inside a Westfalia. I loved it.
We agreed the sale and discussed the work that would be required to get the bus up to MOT or APK (Dutch MOT) standard. The remit is the bus has to be able to get me home. We've estimated that completion should be by the end of this month (April) and then I've just got to fit in collecting it. Stanford Hall VW Show is on the 5th May so that is our target.
There is a bit of damage on the passenger side of the bus, but nothing particularly bad and for reasons we can't quite work out, three lower half panels had a poor, rushed respray probably 20 years ago. There is little sign of damage so it's something I will explore further in the future - a midland paintwerks job methinks??
Anyway, that's caught us up to the present day, I'm now just counting down the time until I can collect, planning the ferry and flight over.
Thanks for reading
Paddy
