Volkswagen will introduce the long-awaited production version of the 2017 ID.Buzz concept on March 9, 2022. The show starts at 7:00 p.m. in Germany, which is 1:00 p.m. in New York and 10:00 a.m. in California. It’s taken the Wolfsburg-based company about five years to turn the electric design study into a production model, but the basic idea of resurrecting the original Bus released in 1950 is over 20 years old.
Join us for a look at Volkswagen’s previous Bus-inspired concepts.
Unveiled at the 2001 edition of the Detroit Auto Show, the Microbus Concept caught a ball set rolling by the New Beetle. Retro cars were hugely popular in the post-Y2K era: Mini had morphed into a standalone brand to modernize the original model (whose production run exceeded even the most optimistic expectations), the Chrysler PT Cruiser was one of the most head-turning cars on American roads, the BMW Z8 was marketed as a modern-day 507, and Ford was preparing to unveil the distinctly 1950s-flavored 11th-generation Thunderbird.
The plucky New Beetle arguably set this trend, and Volkswagen hoped to replicate its success by rebooting the Bus. Early on, it was evident that building a van with toaster-like proportions in line with the original’s while staying on the legal side of global safety regulations wouldn’t be feasible, and in hindsight the Microbus Concept shares several key styling cues with the ID. Buzz. It wore a tall and short front end, it eschewed round headlights in favor of high-mounted horizontal units, and it placed the driver behind (rather than on top of) the front wheels.
Power came from a front-mounted, 3.2-liter V6 rated at 231 horsepower and 236 pound-feet of torque. Inside and out, the Microbus looked and sounded like a concept designed with production in mind, and Volkswagen announced plans to begin building it in Hanover, Germany, in 2003. Several setbacks (very few of which have been made public) delayed the project and the Microbus was ultimately canned in 2004.
It took about a decade for Volkswagen to dust off the modern-day Bus project. One issue was that none of its global divisions truly needed the car; its American dealers had the Chrysler-built Routan minivan in their showrooms, its European dealers offered buyers people- and cargo-hauling versions of the fifth-generation Transporter, and its Brazilian stores still sold an updated, water-cooled version of the second-generation Bus. And yet, momentum picked up in Wolfsburg during the late 2010s. The Bulli (a nickname given to the original model in its home market) made its debut as a concept at the 2011 Geneva Motor Show with a lot of familiar design cues and a few unexpected ones.
Compared to the Microbus, the Bulli wore a more angular design and it featured a smaller overall footprint with front-hinged doors instead of sliding units. It looked more like a van developed to replace the Routan than one designed to take the torch from the Transporter. And there was a big surprise beneath the sheet metal: the concept was entirely electric. It was fitted with a lithium-ion battery pack that zapped a 113-horsepower electric motor into motion. It was never approved for production, but it had a lasting influence on the modern-day Bus project.
Few took Volkswagen’s third attempt at bringing the Bus into the 21st century seriously, yet the BUDD-e was a lot more important than many gave it credit for. Presented at CES 2016, it was jam-packed with tech features but it didn’t look very Bus-like; the original model’s flair simply wasn’t there. That’s likely why its design had no influence on the ID. Buzz. What was under the sheet metal was far more telling, though.
Details were few and far between at the time, but Volkswagen told us that the BUDD-e was underpinned by a new, modular architecture it was creating specifically for electric cars. It was fitted with a single rear-mounted electric motor in its standard configuration, though it could accommodate a second motor between the front wheels for more power and through-the-road all-wheel-drive. At the time, Autoblog learned from a company spokesperson that these technologies weren’t ready for production but that they were being developed for future use. Fast-forward to 2022, and the BUDD-e accurately previewed the ID. Buzz’s technical layout — even if its exterior design wasn’t moved forward.
All of the aforementioned concepts relied on more-or-less retro styling cues to bring the spirit of the original Bus into the 21st century, though it’s interesting to note that the second-generation model (affectionately called Bay Window in the enthusiast community) was built in Brazil until regulations killed it in December 2013. The family tree never stopped growing, however, even if many of its branches never reached our market. The third- and fourth-generation vans are well-known in America; the former was called Vanagon and the latter was known as the EuroVan. In many overseas markets, the fifth-generation Transporter was sold from 2003 to 2015, when the sixth- and current-generation model (shown above) took over. These hard-working haulers do everything that the original Bus did. Offered as vans and as pickups, they take families skiing, they work in construction, they deliver parcels, and, of course, they can be configured as well-equipped campers.
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Source: www.autoblog.com
