• Volkswagen will restore the 1977 Microbus that was somehow spared by the Los Angeles fires.
Few will soon forget the massive-scale fires that ravaged several suburbs of Los Angeles, California, including the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, this past January.
After the flames passed, mot much remained intact on the ground. Some houses emerged miraculously unscathed. Then there was the old Volkswagen Microbus that was spared, unlike so many hundreds of other vehicles in the region.
To many, that vehicle’s survival defied logic. This image captured the scale of the devastation around the vehicle, which was relatively intact – though only relatively, since it did sustain some damage. The right side, notably, suffered serious heat damage.
The photograph taken by Mark J. Terrill of the Associated Press went very quickly viral, unsurprisingly. And not only because the image is so striking. It’s also because of the iconic status of the VW Microbus, which became such a symbol of the counterculture of the late 1960s in California.
The vehicle in question is actually a 1977 model, and it belongs to Malibu resident Megan Weinraub, a designer of surfboards and skateboards.
Volkswagen into action
Volkswagen of America announced this week that it will restore Weinraub’s microbus to like-new condition. Which is great, but it took some doing on the company’s part to make this happen: VW had to obtain special permission to retrieve the vehicle, since the disaster area is still not accessible to the public.
The microbus was transported about an hour west of the site of the fire to Volkswagen's Oxnard campus, where the company's historical vehicle fleet is stored and maintained. The model will need a mechanical overhaul and additional repairs due to heat damage, but the task should not be overly difficult.
