The VW bus is 75 years old, here’s a look at its history

On March 8, 1950, Volkswagen, maker of the Beetle automobile, began producing its second vehicle, the microbus, known officially as the Volkswagen Type 2 (the Beetle was the Type 1) or the Transporter.

The VW bus was reportedly the brainchild of Dutch businessman Ben Pon, an importer of Beetles to the Netherlands, who saw a market for a small bus and in 1947 sketched out his concept. Volkswagen engineers further developed the idea. The bus eventually collected a number of nicknames, including the Combi (for combined-use vehicle), the Splittie (for its split windshield) and in Germany it was known as the Bulli.

According to “Bug” by Phil Patton, when Grateful Dead musician Jerry Garcia died in 1995, Volkswagen ran an ad featuring a drawing of the front of a bus with a tear streaming down it. The bus was a favorite of the hippie counterculture in the 1960s and surfers still today.

In the 1950s, the Volkswagen arrived in the U.S., and the initial reception was not very good but after a successful advertising campaign from the ad agency Doyle Dane Bernbach sales increased dramatically. VW became the top-selling auto import in the U.S. In 1972, the VW Beetle passed the iconic Ford Model T as the world’s best-selling car, with over 15 million vehicles produced.

Although the bus saw much success for over 40 years, its sales declined in the ’90s with so many minivans on the market. While the newer-model buses continued to struggle with sales, the classic VW Bus was finding huge sales at auction.

At the 2013 Palm Beach Barrett-Jackson classic car auction, a 1963 23-Window Safari Samba Microbus sold for $126,500. In Scottsdale the following year, a bidder bought a 1961 Deluxe 23-Window Microbus for $148,500 and every year since then, the sales of classic VW buses continually grows. Last year at a Barrett-Jackson auction in Palm Beach, Florida, a 1961 23-Window sold for $291,500.