A
Anonymous
Guest
We bring you the story of the World's oldest-surviving Bay window van - number 38. Owner Demian takes up the story ...
I found and purchased this pickup in March 2005, and you can only imagine my excitement when I found out the chassis number and I discovered it on my birthday !
The first owner was a land agent company, and the second owner was a carpenter. The third owner, the one before me, was a farmer. He purchased the pickup in 1972 and drove it for 7 years and wasn't used again after 1979. The tacho now reads 9800 kilometers.
It still has it's original paint, except for the front panel, which has been rolled at some point with some grey paint.
There has only been little welding on it. Someone replaced one and a half sills in the 70s. It's actually very solid, requiring only a replacement load bed and perhaps the sills again. I also need to replace the treasure chest door and the gates. It was delivered to Sweden and taken into traffic the 8th of November 1967. The pickup left the factory on 15 July and has chassis number 38. That's one month earlier than the oldest known panel van, with chassis number 67, which was built 17 August. So it looks as though there were not many bay buses being produced in the beginning. It was delivered with a 1500cc engine, although the VW birth certificate says that the engine number is "not available". Vincent Molenaar, the VW World's M-plate guru, told me that it had very special M-plate in having not been painted, and that's strange - he's never seen an unpainted one before, these generally being applied prior to the van being painted.
It was delivered with padded dashboard but without a glovebox lid. That's also unusual, I think. In Vincent's book, "VW Transporter and Microbus Specification", it states that padded dashboards always were delivered with a lid. It was also delivered without an inner rear-view mirror. I don't know if that's unusual - but I have never seen that before.
My plan is to restore it very carefully and keep the original painting as long it goes. I have no regrets about slamming my barndoor deluxe - but as for Pickup Number 38 - no way !
I found and purchased this pickup in March 2005, and you can only imagine my excitement when I found out the chassis number and I discovered it on my birthday !
The first owner was a land agent company, and the second owner was a carpenter. The third owner, the one before me, was a farmer. He purchased the pickup in 1972 and drove it for 7 years and wasn't used again after 1979. The tacho now reads 9800 kilometers.
It still has it's original paint, except for the front panel, which has been rolled at some point with some grey paint.
There has only been little welding on it. Someone replaced one and a half sills in the 70s. It's actually very solid, requiring only a replacement load bed and perhaps the sills again. I also need to replace the treasure chest door and the gates. It was delivered to Sweden and taken into traffic the 8th of November 1967. The pickup left the factory on 15 July and has chassis number 38. That's one month earlier than the oldest known panel van, with chassis number 67, which was built 17 August. So it looks as though there were not many bay buses being produced in the beginning. It was delivered with a 1500cc engine, although the VW birth certificate says that the engine number is "not available". Vincent Molenaar, the VW World's M-plate guru, told me that it had very special M-plate in having not been painted, and that's strange - he's never seen an unpainted one before, these generally being applied prior to the van being painted.
It was delivered with padded dashboard but without a glovebox lid. That's also unusual, I think. In Vincent's book, "VW Transporter and Microbus Specification", it states that padded dashboards always were delivered with a lid. It was also delivered without an inner rear-view mirror. I don't know if that's unusual - but I have never seen that before.
My plan is to restore it very carefully and keep the original painting as long it goes. I have no regrets about slamming my barndoor deluxe - but as for Pickup Number 38 - no way !
