Late Volkswagen T2 Transporter Is Down On the Alameda Street

Way back in the early days of the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand™, I lived on an island in the San Francisco Bay— where I'd bought my first car for 50 bucks at the age of 14 and later had the Alameda County Bomb Squad called in because of an unfortunate high-school-locker mishap involving a junkyard-obtained Malaise Era Ford seat-belt buzzer— and wrote about better than 500 interesting old cars parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot. Well, the Down On the Street series (yes, named after the Stooges song) is back, and I'm following up a Denver-spotted '65 Rambler with a genuine Alameda-parked VW.

Volkswagen didn't make many year-to-year changes on their air-cooled vehicles over the decades, and it's tough for someone who isn't a stone Transporter fanatic to tell an early (1968-1972) from a late (1973-1979) US-market T2.

Because I owned one of the world's most terrifying 1958 Beetles when I was in high school, I know a bit about air-cooled Transporters and other members of the rusty-body-bolted-to-1930s-stamped-pan family… but not enough to nail down an exact year on this van at a glance. It's obviously post-1973, based on the taillights and bumpers, and I believe the hinges on the engine lid mark it as a 1977-1979 model.

Anyway, it's not especially rusty, it has color-matched steel wheels with factory dogdish hubcaps, and it gets driven.

Well done, Alameda Transporter owner. Well done.