Cargolex
Sittin' on the dock of the bay: 1970 VW Bus
After 17 years, Volkswagen replaced the original Type 2 van, with it's 1940s-style split-window front, with an updated version. The "Bay window" bus had many new elements (most notably, it did away with swing axles in the rear suspension), but at heart it was basically just a heavy revision. It would prove to be spectacularly long lived. Introduced in Europe and the U.S. for 1967, it finally went out of production in Brazil in 2013.
At the heart of that longevity was the basic practicality of the bus - configurable as a pickup, a cargo van, a camper, or a passenger van, the rugged air-cooled engines and simple components mean that in places where corrosion is uncommon, the T2 can basically run forever, and run cheaply, too.
In the U.S., the "chicken tax" import tariff curtailed sales of the commercial van and pickup variants - indeed, these were the very vehicles that tax was aimed at, but the camper and van remained very popular throughout the 1970s.
The "chicken tax" was the result of a trade dispute that took place in the early 1960s. American Industrial farming radically lowered the price of Chicken in the 1950s - like Oranges, Chicken was once a luxury and not something an ordinary person ate every day - and subsequently consumption of Chicken grew dramatically at home and abroad. European Farmers were negatively impacted by the cheap imported Chicken, and some in Europe objected to the farming methods. So tariffs were enacted on Chicken imports to France and Germany.
The United States was keen to get rid of those Tariffs - but for more than two years, no agreement could be found for how to make that happen. Finally, in late 1963 President Johnson enacted retaliatory tariffs on potato starch, dextrin, brandy, and light trucks. On paper, these targeted items were intended to "compensate" for the revenue lost on Chicken exports, but in reality they were the product of several back-room deals, including one dealing with the UAW and trucks.
Johnson wanted to avoid strikes and to garner big Union support for upcoming Civil Rights legislation. UAW President Walter Reuther wanted to curb VW imports. The result was that VW's relatively small truck business was targeted.
As a result, a 25% import tariff was levied on these vehicles, and that tariff remains in effect today. The dispute over Chicken was largely solved in short order - and all the other tariffs evaporated with it - except this one, which enjoyed continued lobbying support from Detroit. In time, Detroit manufacturers would use various methods of "captive importation" to get around this tariff, and Japanese manufacturers would build plants in the United States to do the same. Even VW would produce a pickup here in the early eighties - the Golf 1 based Caddy.
That the T2 should be linked to political events in the 1960s is appropriate, because even though the "Bay window" bus was produced long after the sixties ended, and most of them are from the seventies here in the United States, the bus is also deeply associated with American sixties counterculture. In many ways it was the opposite of a traditional American car, and even after the big three Detroit automakers introduced Forward-control vans in the early sixties, VW's passenger van sales were scarcely dented.
Nor did those vans have the staying power of the bus - surviving sixties Ford Econolines, Dodge A-series, and Chevrolet Vans are quite rare now, but the Bus is still and everyday sight in some parts of the United States.
In 1979, the old bus was replaced by the related, but heavily modernized, Vanagon, at least in the U.S. In Mexico and Brazil, production of the Bay window continued far longer, finally ending when the old machine could no longer be made emissions compliant after 2013. By that time, emissions laws had forced VW do Brasil to convert the Kombi to a water-cooled engine, among other changes, but it looked just like the good old T2.
©2015 A. Kwanten.
Sittin' on the dock of the bay: 1970 VW Bus
After 17 years, Volkswagen replaced the original Type 2 van, with it's 1940s-style split-window front, with an updated version. The "Bay window" bus had many new elements (most notably, it did away with swing axles in the rear suspension), but at heart it was basically just a heavy revision. It would prove to be spectacularly long lived. Introduced in Europe and the U.S. for 1967, it finally went out of production in Brazil in 2013.
At the heart of that longevity was the basic practicality of the bus - configurable as a pickup, a cargo van, a camper, or a passenger van, the rugged air-cooled engines and simple components mean that in places where corrosion is uncommon, the T2 can basically run forever, and run cheaply, too.
In the U.S., the "chicken tax" import tariff curtailed sales of the commercial van and pickup variants - indeed, these were the very vehicles that tax was aimed at, but the camper and van remained very popular throughout the 1970s.
The "chicken tax" was the result of a trade dispute that took place in the early 1960s. American Industrial farming radically lowered the price of Chicken in the 1950s - like Oranges, Chicken was once a luxury and not something an ordinary person ate every day - and subsequently consumption of Chicken grew dramatically at home and abroad. European Farmers were negatively impacted by the cheap imported Chicken, and some in Europe objected to the farming methods. So tariffs were enacted on Chicken imports to France and Germany.
The United States was keen to get rid of those Tariffs - but for more than two years, no agreement could be found for how to make that happen. Finally, in late 1963 President Johnson enacted retaliatory tariffs on potato starch, dextrin, brandy, and light trucks. On paper, these targeted items were intended to "compensate" for the revenue lost on Chicken exports, but in reality they were the product of several back-room deals, including one dealing with the UAW and trucks.
Johnson wanted to avoid strikes and to garner big Union support for upcoming Civil Rights legislation. UAW President Walter Reuther wanted to curb VW imports. The result was that VW's relatively small truck business was targeted.
As a result, a 25% import tariff was levied on these vehicles, and that tariff remains in effect today. The dispute over Chicken was largely solved in short order - and all the other tariffs evaporated with it - except this one, which enjoyed continued lobbying support from Detroit. In time, Detroit manufacturers would use various methods of "captive importation" to get around this tariff, and Japanese manufacturers would build plants in the United States to do the same. Even VW would produce a pickup here in the early eighties - the Golf 1 based Caddy.
That the T2 should be linked to political events in the 1960s is appropriate, because even though the "Bay window" bus was produced long after the sixties ended, and most of them are from the seventies here in the United States, the bus is also deeply associated with American sixties counterculture. In many ways it was the opposite of a traditional American car, and even after the big three Detroit automakers introduced Forward-control vans in the early sixties, VW's passenger van sales were scarcely dented.
Nor did those vans have the staying power of the bus - surviving sixties Ford Econolines, Dodge A-series, and Chevrolet Vans are quite rare now, but the Bus is still and everyday sight in some parts of the United States.
In 1979, the old bus was replaced by the related, but heavily modernized, Vanagon, at least in the U.S. In Mexico and Brazil, production of the Bay window continued far longer, finally ending when the old machine could no longer be made emissions compliant after 2013. By that time, emissions laws had forced VW do Brasil to convert the Kombi to a water-cooled engine, among other changes, but it looked just like the good old T2.
©2015 A. Kwanten.