Okay, so the car I drove and will be writing about has fewer than three cylinders, is not currently available for sale in the U.S., is kind of tall and narrow, and sports two-tone paint. Does that help? Alright, alright, fine. No, there are no owners of 40 year-old Citroën 2CVs flying me out anywhere. The car I drove is the new Volkswagen ID.Buzz, the electric re-birth of the classic Type 2 bus. This one is the Euro-spec short wheelbase version, and will be a bit different from what we’ll end up getting in America in 2024. But it’s close enough, and while I can’t talk about how it is to drive or anything yet, I can tell you that almost everyone who saw this thing looked and smiled.
And those were Danes, who seem to have a reputation for not smiling in public. This thing seems to help them break that unwritten rule. So, stay tuned! And, if there’s anything specific you’d like to know, tell me in the comments and I’ll either see what I can do or not read your comments at all. One or the other. It’s win-win! I don’t really care about the retro design any more (it had 20 years to fizzle out), but I think that it’s nice of VW to try and bring back a low floor high roof roomy quite sensible minivan car shape to the market, in a time where everyone is bying those stupid high floor low roof SUVs. I drive a 2006 Grand Caravan with Sto-N-Go seats that fold into the floor and it will hold many sheets of plywood and will drive it until the wheels fall off or something better comes along, and I just replaced the wheels. Are you some sort of shrubber? Next you’ll tell me you cut down the mightiest tree in the forest using a herring! Honestly, I started saving for one of these when they announced it. But given the expected price now I would have to seriously warp my world view to think of it as the fun loving tree hugging hippie camper I really want. Seriously. Take that paint job away, and what’s left that’s cool about it? The Emperor has no clothes, people. That being said, the ID.BUzz is cool….I just hope it doesn’t stick with the touch-buttons theme all VW ID cars seem to go with that I’ve read suck balls, because I LOATHE touch buttons…no idea why companies are still using them despite the fact there are studies and MANY user opinions out there agreeing that they are far less efficient and easy to use. Anything I can’t just simple do/feel by muscle memory while driving without taking my eyes off the road is BS, and anything with voice commands barely works whatsoever without making constant mistakes :/ Can they just give us an the EV Buzz, but….keep it as basic as the original VW Buzz (including only actual HELPFUL safety equipment, i.e. airbags, traction control, ABS) because THAT is what I would want….none of that assisted safety stuff with cameras that slams on your brakes full-on for no reason when the sun reflects on it the wrong way :/ He cites all its prodigious abilities and performance stats, but then relates how the actual driving experience left him completely annoyed. He got this vague feeling that with all the computer-mapped throttle and gearing action, the car doing was really largely controlling the experience. Sure, he was nominally driving it, but with every action he took, the car seemed to be basically telling him “we value your input and are glad you’re part of the process” as it ultimately decided the final application. (great Autotopic book BTW) As I’ve commented often, I am in the market for a three row family hauler and would strongly prefer either a BEV or PHEV. The Pacifica and XC90 are the only options currently and both are attractive, but we’re trying to hold off as long as we can in the hopes of some market cooling off. The release date of the buzz is going to be hard to wait for, and I’m not 100% jazzed about buying a launch edition of anything, but on paper this ticks all our boxes. The only cool ID car that actually looked both fun and as good or better than the original was the ID.Buggy, then VW canceled it. Two, there’s no getting around the fact that it’s a minivan. Americans hate minivans currently. The only people buying minivans are parents with 3+ kids who can’t afford whatever 3-row SUV is necessary to keep up with the Joneses these days. “But Chrysler sold 98,323 Pacificas in 2021! That’s a lot!” 98k is a lot by itself. Until you find out they sold 264,444 Grand Cherokees in 2021, an increase of 54,658 from 2021. Plus 65,935 Durangos, 2,675 Grand Wagoneers, and 5,439 Wagoneers. Over 3 million SUVs sold in 2021. Who wants to guess how many minivans were sold across all makes and models including commercial only sales in 2021? Anyone who had 310,000 or just 10% of SUV sales step right up for your prize! Three, they can’t make enough and it’s not priced low enough. Allegedly they sold out at just 10,000 orders. See above re minivan sales. They allegedly sold out at less than half the Kia Carnivals sold for all of 2021. And it’s expensive as fuck – over $45,000 without ADM in the US, and nearly £60k in the UK (great job with Brexit, morons.) People who want a ‘cute retro toy’ can’t afford that shit. Part of what made the PT Cruiser successful besides it’s charm and obvious utility was it’s price. You could get into a PT Cruiser for less than an inflation adjusted $26k – cheaper than the average used car price. And four? The ID.Buzz completely and utterly fails the utility test; the charm will wear off in a matter of weeks. It only has a 260 mile range – that’s it. Forget road tripping, which is what a lot of customers eyeing these are taking into consideration. They’re not buying these to haul kids. They want a ‘modern’ VW microbus and a lot of them are going to be people who already own the original. And this definitely ain’t it. I see this having a very, very short production run with low numbers and sales cratering in year two. (Especially with the bullshit VW dealers love to pull.) As I’ve said a bunch here already, we have enough angry grayscale cars. More colorful cars that don’t take themselves too seriously are a welcome addition…although if I recall correctly this thing is going to be expensive when it comes stateside. It seems like every desirable EV these days is going to come in at $50,000+ unless you’re willing to buy the least powerful variant…which I personally am not. My wife and I are definitely EV curious, but due to the current infrastructure limitations and the 300+ mile road trips we have to take a few times a year it would be hard for us to make one work…especially in the price range I listed above. We could definitely make it work, but making it work with the current constraints doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. EV-ification is the perfect time to break with this. It’ll be interesting when kids in the future talk about the designs of their now classics in their holographic chat rooms…”yeah the must-have automotive designs of the 2010s were often notable for being designs from the 1960s”. I just think it’s kind of lazy and cynical at a certain point, not to mention regressive. I think VW and fellow VAG family member Porsche do an amazing job of just what you mentioned-contemporary design with retro elements…and although it may seem a bit hypocritical based on what I said above, I do think the current Bronco is great looking car that did the same thing. It’s a modern design with tasteful nods to the past. I too like the Bronco design (both of them), but I have a relative with an S-197 and I feel exactly that way about it – that it’s just too self-consciously trying to scream “remember Mustangs from the ’60s! Ford does!”
