CarBrandLogos archive · Volkswagen · 1950

VolkswagenType 2

The van that carried tradesmen, surfboards and an entire counterculture.

Photo: Raizy · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story

A defining chapter in Volkswagen history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Volkswagen Type 2, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The idea came from outside the company. Ben Pon, Volkswagen's Dutch importer, visited Wolfsburg in 1947 and saw the flat parts-movers the factory had improvised on Beetle running gear. He sketched a box on wheels with the driver at the very front and the engine at the back, and asked whether Volkswagen would build it. The engineers found that the Beetle floorpan flexed too much under load, so a purpose-designed platform with a ladder frame was developed instead, and the vehicle went on sale in March 1950 as the Type 2 — the Beetle being the Type 1.

1973-1980 Volkswagen Kombi van 01 · OSX · Public domain

Design and engineering

It was a remarkably efficient piece of packaging. With the engine at the rear and the driver over the front wheels, almost the entire length of the vehicle was usable, and the same basic structure produced a panel van, a pickup, a nine-seat Microbus and the Samba with its sunroof and skylight windows. It was slow — the Beetle's flat-four had a great deal to move — but it was cheap, reliable and endlessly adaptable, and it created the light commercial segment as Europe now understands it.

1973-1980 Volkswagen Kombi van 02 · OSX · Public domain

1968-1973 and 1973-1980 Volkswagen Kombi vans

In production

The cultural life came later and was not planned. In 1960s America the split-screen bus was the cheapest way to move a group of people and their possessions across a continent, which made it the vehicle of surfers, musicians and the counterculture, and permanently attached a set of associations to what was designed as a builder's van. The bay-window T2 of 1967 inherited them.

1968-1973 and 1973-1980 Volkswagen Kombi vans · OSX · Public domain

Legacy

The layout changed eventually — the T3 of 1979 was the last rear-engined version, gaining water cooling in 1982, and the T4 of 1990 moved to a front engine and front-wheel drive. But the original shape refused to die: Brazil built air-cooled buses until 2005 and water-cooled ones in the same body until December 2013, six decades after launch. Volkswagen revived the idea deliberately with the electric ID. Buzz in 2022, which is the clearest possible acknowledgement of what the original still means.

At a glance

The facts that define it.

Produced

1949–present

Body

4/5-door panel van

Technical specification

The Type 2, in detail.

Production: November 1949 – present
Class: Light commercial vehicle (M)
Body style: 4/5-door panel van ; 4/5-door minibus ; 2-door pickup truck; pickup (regular cab) ; 3-door pickup truck; pickup (crew cab)
Layout: Longitudinal Rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive (T1–T3) ; Longitudinal Rear-engine, four-wheel-drive (T3) ; Transverse Front-engine, front-wheel-drive (T4–present) ; Transverse Front-engine, four-wheel-drive (T4–present)
Manufacturer: Volkswagen

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