It was just officially announced this week, but that hasn’t stopped van lovers from already coming up with customization ideas for the new VW ID. Buzz electric van.
Motor Trend has a collection of customized versions, from chop-top truck to full-on hippie peace microbus, to our favorite, the classic camper!
Take a look below.
“One of the most valuable and sought-after versions of the original T1 van, the 21-window bus was relatively rare and came festooned with nearly as much glass as tin-can-thin bodywork. Today, these wonderful classic 21-window vans (yep, they have that many windows!) regularly trade hands for six-figure sums.
Will Volkswagen bring the idea back for an ID Buzz with maximum airiness and outward visibility, perhaps as a range-topping luxury model? Imagine Jeep’s Grand Wagoneer treatment or Mercedes-Maybach’s whole deal—maximal versions of regular Wagoneer and S-Class models, for example—but in an electric van. More windows, more luxury!”
“Here’s another Porsche-VW racing connection fantasy that we’re purely throwing out there for fun. After all, just as a modern racing team couldn’t dream of stuff all its gear into an ID Buzz—let alone several ID Buzz vans—there are likely few cars that would fit on the back of one converted to a car transporter.
Even as we’ve imagined an ID Buzz transporter here, with a wheelbase stretch that stretches the bounds of what’s possible, we figure a new-age car carrier based on the electric van would only be capable of lugging around, say, an original Porsche 550 Spyder. Given that that car is virtually the same size as a modern golf cart, you can probably push the hope from your mind that next year’s Porsche 911 GT3 racers will be gliding around paddocks on the backs of ID Buzzes. Still, the electric van’s flat floor and low-mounted drive motors would make for a compelling base for a hauler…”
“Starting way back in its Type 1 generation, the VW microbus was available in oddball pickup-truck variations, including a two-door regular cab that was essentially a cargo van with no bodywork behind the front seats. The more 2020s-appropriate configuration would be, of course, the four-door crew-cab Doka style.
Most pickups these days, you see, are sold in crew-cab form. Volkswagen could revive the Doka treatment for the ID Buzz to deliver a right-size EV pickup to appeal to a different kind of lifestyle crowd. Yes, VW also could cross-pollinate the Doka and Syncro (as it has before) to deliver an electric, off-road-focused ID Buzz pickup, and we encourage it to do so. In any event, the Doka actually seems likely to reappear in VW’s portfolio, if only because the flexibility of the ID Buzz’s MEB electric platform allows for relatively cheap-to-engineer variations, and the automaker has been rumored to be considering a pickup for the U.S. market for years. Last we heard, it felt delivering such a vehicle to the truck-lovin’ U.S. would be most easily accomplished via an EV, rather than converting its global Amarok midsize truck for Americans’ tastes, but who knows?”
“Baby boomers, pay attention—just as you decorated all your VW New Beetles with flower power stickers and actual flowers in that model’s built-in dashboard flower vase way back in 1999, get ready to snap up ID Buzz vans and deck them out like it’s 1969 again. Peace, love, save the whales! War is bad! Indiscriminate use of any and every color available to create happy-go-lucky murals atop the factory-applied paint!
Hey, with rampant inequality, foreign wars to protest, an entrenched leadership class to provoke in the name of change, and the pandemic-driven obsession with #vanlife, the hippy van might be on the cusp of another moment—at least to the younger generations hoping to shape the world in their image. And this one’s electric!”
“The pandemic thrust camper vans and travel trailers to the vanguard of automotive culture, what with everyone mostly stuck inside for an extended period, eager to just get away from it all—and other people at the same time. Skip crowded planes, drive right on by those hotels with diseased common areas, and forget the rental-car counter—why not grab a common van, gut the interior, and make it into a mobile getaway? Bonus points if you nab an off-road-ready van with a lifted suspension, sweet all-terrain tires, and four-wheel drive.
Curious where this idea originated? Look back at the VW Vanagon Syncro, the four-wheel-drive T3 van introduced in the 1980s, decades ahead of its time. Some original Syncros were converted to campers, even. They were equipped with 4WD courtesy of Steyr-Daimler-Puch Works in Graz, Austria, though a modern ID Buzz would simply utilize its MEB electric car platform’s available dual-motor AWD system (one motor driving the front axle, another driving the rear). We’ve imagined the ID Buzz Syncro here in a cool olive khaki color, with a raised suspension, roof ladder, and brush guards. Add a roof tent, and this is an EV bugout vehicle we’d drool over.”
