Volkswagen Bus

The first car I bought as a poor sailor.... 1965 VW Bus complete with two engines, a 36HP and 40HP, with the "spare" engine on the floor between the front and rear seats, and the middle seats taken out. That should have been a warning. Eventually, I learned to rebuild the engines, swap them out by myself, and generally appreciate the flexibility that having a spare engine aboard at all times brought.

One thing these didn't have was good engine heat. It's a long way from the rear-mounted engine up to the windshield and driver's toes. The car was philosophically in tune with the early 70's gas crisis and 55 MPH speed limit. It got very good gas mileage and would only wind up to 55 mph in free air, though one could (at the risk of a subsequent valve job) go as fast as 65 MPH by drafting semis. Don't ask how I know...

1966 VW Type 2. GNU Free Documentation image by Wikipedia author Eric Meltzer

Tillamook Cheese uses a variety of customized and restored VW buses for marketing purposes. Unfortunately, the tow vehicle and trailer carrying them was stolen in Manteca CA on July 12, 2014. The trailer and at least two of the vans were destroyed by fire. Tillamook was offering a $10K reward for recovery of the remaining vans.

I dumped the '65 van after going back to college, but relapsed in the early 80's, and bought a '68 van when I was stationed on the island of Guam. It made a great snorkeling and scuba wagon. At least we didn't need heat on Guam....

Beautiful Type 2 converted to electric vehicle

Additional VW Bus images from Google Image Search

Volkswagen Bus Wikipedia Page