Photo: Volkswagen
Creating one car to become a cultural phenomenon is not an easy task; creating two is nearly impossible. Yet Volkswagen did it, and decades after their launch, the Beetle and Type 2 still cause a stir.
Volkswagen somewhat botched the legacy of the original Beetle with the ill-fated resurrection of the model in 1998. It will also attempt to revive the Type 2 in the coming years as an electric van, and we can only hope they won’t screw this up too.
But until the revival van as part of the ID family, Type 2 lovers still look back to the original line. Some of them, with the help of VW’s American division, have been hard at work trying to resurrect a symbol of the Sixties: the Type 2 Light bus.
Back in 1969 at Woodstock, Associated Press and Rolling Stone photographers went nuts at the sight of the small van painted in all the colors of the world.
The original car is the creation of artist Robert Hieronimus, an activist renowned back in the day for his murals. He worked on the car at the request of the van’s owner, who at the time was using it to carry people to Woodstock.
This weekend, at the Orange Country Transporter Organization Winter Meet in Long Beach, California, the Light bus will be born again. Not as the restored van, as the original is still to be found, but as a replica whose build was funded on Kickstarter.
The van VW will be displaying at the event is the result of three years’ work led by Hieronimus himself.
“The bus is really about being one people on one planet,” says Hieronimus, who is also a symbologist. “On every side of the bus is a story - many stories - and the stories all point to unification, working together and a higher conscientiousness, which is what Light really is all about.”
Volkswagen did not say what will happen to the van after this weekend’s event concludes.
But until the revival van as part of the ID family, Type 2 lovers still look back to the original line. Some of them, with the help of VW’s American division, have been hard at work trying to resurrect a symbol of the Sixties: the Type 2 Light bus.
Back in 1969 at Woodstock, Associated Press and Rolling Stone photographers went nuts at the sight of the small van painted in all the colors of the world.
The original car is the creation of artist Robert Hieronimus, an activist renowned back in the day for his murals. He worked on the car at the request of the van’s owner, who at the time was using it to carry people to Woodstock.
This weekend, at the Orange Country Transporter Organization Winter Meet in Long Beach, California, the Light bus will be born again. Not as the restored van, as the original is still to be found, but as a replica whose build was funded on Kickstarter.
The van VW will be displaying at the event is the result of three years’ work led by Hieronimus himself.
“The bus is really about being one people on one planet,” says Hieronimus, who is also a symbologist. “On every side of the bus is a story - many stories - and the stories all point to unification, working together and a higher conscientiousness, which is what Light really is all about.”
Volkswagen did not say what will happen to the van after this weekend’s event concludes.
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