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Like countless others attending the Detroit auto show last January, I found myself standing enthralled by the Volkswagen Microbus Concept vehicle, memories flooding back from my days of long hair, tie-dyed shirts and peace symbol decals. My next door neighbor, a VW fanatic who houses his vintage Microbus in my garage over the winter, insists nothing on wheels evokes more smiles and pleasant remembrances.
It’s ironic that the company that invented the passenger van failed to recognize its potential. In the decades since the original Microbus went out of production, Volkswagen has tried, on-and-off-and-on again, to carve out a small share of the booming minivan market, largely to no avail.
The latest effort, dubbed the Eurovan, made its debut in 1992, and was largely ignored. For good reason, considering the towering, 2.5-ton behemoth offered a meager, 109-horsepower engine. That might have been enough oomph in the era of Love, Peace and minimal power, but not today.
“Let’s face it,” concedes Frank Maguire, vice president of marketing and sales for Volkswagen of America, “it was slow and overpriced.”
So, when VW pulled the van off the market between 1994 and 1997, virtually no one noticed.
Attention deficit
Will anyone pay attention now that the Eurovan is back? It certainly helps to have a new version of Volkswagen’s torquey VR6 engine, this one pumping out 201 hp. But perhaps a more attractive feature can be found on the window sticker, where shoppers will find a price cut averaging roughly 15 percent, the late-2001 GLS model carrying a base price of $26,200, down more than $5000 from last year’s model. The up-line Multivan gets a similar discount, to $27,700.
That better positions the Eurovan against some tough competition, including the many and varied Chrysler minivans, as well as Ford’s Windstar, GM’s Lumina and TransSport models, and Honda’s hot-selling Odyssey. But is it enough to win VW a place on your shopping list?
