“I’m a Bus guy, I’ve only ever been a Bus guy. My first car, when I was 17, was a VW Bus and I’ve never driven anything else. And of course, if it’s a camper van, then it gives you such freedom, you can drive everywhere. So, I have a speech in which I say that a car without a bed in it is broken.”
And so opens a conversation with Christian Schlüter. Schlüter is, as you may have gathered, something of a fan of Volkswagen vans, and that’s a fandom that precedes his employment at Volkswagen Vans. He’s been working at VW’s massive van-making factory in Hannover, where the various Buzz, Transporter and Multivan models are made, and these days he’s senior press officer for Volkswagen’s commercial vehicle arm.
Since the launch of the retro-styled Volkswagen ID. Buzz, the electric reincarnation of the classic 1960s Type 2 van, Schlüter has been on a mission to spread the word not just of Volkswagen vans, but of electric power. How? By travelling around Europe (and some of California), tracking down fellow Bus fans and collating their tales.
“I realised that this was probably going to be a one-off in our lifetime,” Schlüter tells me over sandwiches in Sandyford. He’s in Dublin to give a morale-boosting speech to the people at Volkswagen Ireland, and also to show off his now much-used ID. Buzz. “Volkswagen will probably never again have the rebirth of such an iconic vehicle in this way, and I realised I could be part of it, and I could drive it, and so that was how it started. So, I said to my boss that I have one rule, which is that I sleep in the car. Even when we went to California, and the people we visited offered me a very nice guest bedroom in their house, I slept in the Buzz.”
The Buzz, nicknamed Big Bird thanks to its yellow and white paint, has been fitted with a slide-out two-burner cooker in the boot, and a fold-out bed that unrolls a futon-style sleeping spot over the top of the back seats.
The people that Schlüter visited were fellow fans of Volkswagen’s genuinely iconic commercial vehicle, surely the only panel van around which such a legend has grown up. Sure, the Ford Transit has its followers, but can you imagine anyone showing such dedication to a Mercedes Sprinter or a Peugeot Boxer? What is it with the love affair for VW’s load-lugger?
“It’s because you’re part of a family” answers Schlüter. “And it doesn’t matter which one you’re driving - first, second, third, fourth generation. Actually, before coming to Ireland, I was at BusFest, which is one of the biggest Bus community festivals in the world. There are five or six thousand vehicles there, it’s huge, lots of people there, and they’re all there because of a piece of metal.”
That piece of metal has built up an all-but unmatched community around the world, and Schlüter has taken it upon himself to document their stories. The reason for travelling around Europe and California in the electric ID. Buzz - 105,000km and 35 countries, from Norway to Romania, from Spain to Switzerland, and now Ireland - has been to film a series of short films under the title ‘Bulli Love’ (‘Bulli’ being the German nickname for the VW van in all its generations, and which is thought to be a contraction of Bus und Lieferwagen, or Bus and delivery van).
The various stories are collected on VW’s YouTube channels, but also in a book written by Schlüter - ‘111 VW Bus Stories That You Should Know.’ The book includes tales of Tom Hanks’ own VW Bus (yes - America’s Dad is a Bulli fan too), the various versions with Porsche engines including one, the B32, made by Porsche itself in a limited production run, powered by a 204hp flat-six from a 911 SC coupe. The vans were re-engined so that they could keep up with the sports cars on prototype test drives.
There’s more, of course. Buses converted into cinemas, into drag racers, into limousines, into pretty much anything your fancy might take. It’s a far cry from Ben Pon, VW’s Belgian importer, making a crude sketch of a delivery van based on a Beetle chassis, which barely a year later was in production, but from such humble beginnings are legends born.
Finding and recording these tales is reason enough, but Schlüter was also keen to prove that the electric ID. Buzz could be a faithful companion even on far-flung trips such as circumnavigating Iceland, heading for Norway’s North Cape, or driving with an aid convoy to Albania.
“The electric driving experience has changed, and it’s still changing every day” said Schlüter. “For example, in Spain, when we started in 2022, you could get there, but you had to be constantly looking left and right for charging stations. Now, I was in Malaga eight weeks ago, and you don’t even have to think about it. There are ten chargers in every petrol station. There are still countries - like Albania, or Romania - where you’re hopping from charger to charger, or there are places like Greece. We were on a Greek island that was 80 kilometres around but had only one charger. And I had to bring a filming crew member to the airport and also make my ferry connection to Italy and… it was not easy.”
Schlüter’s ID. Buzz is a little range-restricted right now, because he’s fitted it with a roof-top pop-up tent, which makes the car’s already lofty aerodynamic drag figure even higher. He has also used the Buzz to tow a small teardrop-shaped caravan but doing that with the tent on the roof drops the range to around 200km.
However, the Buzz will go a lot further. Schlüter said that on one journey - driving slowly to stay in convoy with a fleet of older VW Buses, which were never what you’d call quick cars - he managed to squeeze 500km out of the ID. Buzz, with a few kilometres of range to spare.
For now, that’s enough touring. Christian, and his wife Katia, are parking up the Buzz for the moment. But likely not forever. There’s a long-wheelbase version coming out, which Schlüter said would make an even better camper conversion, thanks to having more interior space, and a high-performance GTX version which might get a few classic Bus owners talking.
It’s about generating the kind of love people show for the classic VW Bus - exactly what the brand’s chief executive Thomas Schafer, who keeps a Buzz as personal transport at his home in Wicklow, said Volkswagen needs to inculcate.
Schlüter is sure of one thing - the love for the Bus and the Buzz transcends all barriers. “It’s more about friendship. Now, you cannot be a friend to everyone, not to the whole world, but there are connections. They can last over oceans, over time. Some are sporting people, some are overlanders, some are families who just need the space. But they all realise the same thing - it’s a Bus, and now we are part of that family.”