Encounters…
Patrick’s van
The popularity of the ageing VW Kombi is giving the old vehicle new life, at a price.
THIS IS A STORY of the law of supply and demand and how something from the past comes to be imbued with new meaning.
His name is Patrick. He’s maybe in his fifties. His hair is lanky and full. He’s a little thickset and his voice is soft. Patrick comes across as one of those characters capable of fixing things, like the van he drives.
We share a few words as he stands beside that van, his old VW Kombi. It is a worn vehicle, one of the commercial models without side widows, an early model with a split windscreen, the paint faded into a patchwork of hues.
In one or two places rust has eaten into the body. The VW badge has long gone from the front of the vehicle. Inside, the rear seat is covered by a bright red blanket. As he drives away, the vehicle makes that sound only Kombis with an air-cooled engines can make.
“When I bought it 28 years ago it was already 20 years old”, he tells me. “Still has the original engine. I’ve fixed it, replacing parts. Saw the odometer tick over to zero a couple times. It went up to 99,000 miles then flipped to zero. When the original odometer broke and I installed a new one but I haven’t kept count of the mileage. The van did around 600,000 miles before that.
How supply and demand ups value
When it comes to old Kombis it’s the law of supply and demand that takes over. Age leads to scarcity and scarcity bumps up prices.
As Patrick tells it: “I’ve been offered AU$30,000 for the van.” I knew there were avid buyers of old Kombis but I never imagined them to be that generous with their money.
I ask about the white door with ‘Stanwell Tops’ on it in cursive font. Stanwell Tops is an actual place. It’s just south of Sydney, a hill overlooking the village of Stanwell Park. Patrick doesn’t know anything about the lettering on the door. The original door was so rusted he had to find a new one. That new one, the one with the lettering, cost him $5 from a wrecker. Now, he says, it is worth about $500.
Old Kombis have come into demand as collectors and renovators seek them out. They turn rusty old bodies and engines no-longer working into shiny renewed vehicles that start with a single turn of the key. In doing this they draw upon a diminishing pool of old vehicles, pushing up prices well beyond the vehicles worth in metal and new paint. The law of supply and demand.
The myth of the Kombi
There is some kind of brother-and-sisterhood around old Kombis. It’s like a club without official membership, a sense of commonality that spans demographics. Why this happens is thanks to a couple factors — the lived experience of people who have owned Kombis and the mythology of the Kombi.
The first factor is to do with affection and nostalgia. Kombi owners, mostly those who travelled in the vehicles and those who lived in them for a time, come to hold them in whatever affection it is that humans can feel towards machines. From the present they look back on them and remember mainly the good things about those old Kombis rather than the breakdowns and their clunkiness.
That applies to me, too. When I met the woman who became my partner, she drove a white, 1960s commercial model Kombi. She bought it off a couple who drove it around Australia. We put a mattress on the rear platform above the engine compartment and set out on the highway to places north and south. The vehicle had a small refrigerator and sink and cupboards, all we needed for time on the road. With a couple exceptions, it proved a mechanically-reliable vehicle, which is not always the experience of owners of old Kombis.
Imagination can conflict with reality. Patrick put it this way, “People think they would like an old Kombi but when they get into one and see how basic the interior and the driving experience is, they think again”.
Another reason for the popularity of renovating these ageing vehicles, a phenomenon that Patrick says developed in Australia these past twenty or so or so years and that has existed overseas for longer.
It is this. Old Kombis embody meaning. They carry allusions and illusions about how life was, about lives lived in easier, less stressful and less trying times. You don’t have to have owned one to experience this, you just have to buy into the mythology of the Kombi, the vehicle that has come to symbolise freedom and a life perhaps better than the one people live now.
Stories of the road…
How backpackers and irresponsible local travellers make it hard for all
https://medium.com/by-road-track/r-t-how-backpackers-and-irresponsible-local-travellers-make-it-hard-for-all-641ba7f9da2f
End of the road coming for Wicked Campers?
https://medium.com/by-road-track/end-of-the-road-coming-for-wicked-campers-2edb44cea2d4
Patrick’s van
https://medium.com/by-road-track/patricks-van-1709273a34b8
