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From the beginning, the Type 2 has earned many nicknames from its fans, just like the Beetle has. Among the most popular, at least in Germany, are VW-Bus and Bulli (or Bully). The Type 2 was meant to be officially named Bully, but Lanz , producer of the Lanz Bulldog farm tractor, intervened. The model was then presented as the VW Transporter and VW Kleinbus, but the Bully nickname still caught on.
Interestingly, the official German-language model names Transporter and Kombi have been incorporated into English and refer to delivery van and station wagon. Kombi, however, is not only the name of the utilitarian people transporter variant, but is also the Australian and Brazilian term for the whole Type 2 family in much the same way that they are all called VW-Bus in Germany, even the pickup truck variations. In Mexico, the German "Kombi" was 'translated' into "Combi", and became a household word given the vehicle's popularity in Mexico City's public transportation system.
The Australian band Men at Work made the use of Kombi somewhat popular in other parts of the world by using it in the first line of their 1981 hit record Down Under: "Traveling in a fried-out Kombi ..."
The Type 2 was available as:
Apart from these factory variants, there were a multitude of third-party conversions available, some of which were offered through the VW dealer organization. They included but were not limited to refrigerated vans, hearses, ambulances, police vans, fire engines and ladder trucks.
The idea for the Type 2 is credited to Dutch Volkswagen importer Ben Pon , who drew the first sketches of the van in 1947. The aerodynamicsFluid dynamics Aerodynamics is a branch of fluid dynamics concerned with the study of gas flows. The solution of an aerodynamic problem normally involves calculating for various properties of the flow, such as velocity, pressure, density, and temperature, of the first prototypes were not good but heavy optimisation took place at the wind tunnel of the Technical University of Braunschweig. The wind tunnel work paid off, as the Type 2 was aerodynamically superior to the Beetle despite its slab-sided shape. Three years later, under the direction of Volkswagen's new CEO Heinz Nordhoff , the first production model left the factory at WolfsburgWolfsburg is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located at the Aller river northeast of Braunschweig Brunswick . Population: 122,800 (1999). The city is very young, since it was planned by the Nazis in order to build a town for the workers of the Volk.
Unlike the other rear-engined Volkswagens, which evolved constantly over time but never saw the introduction of all-new models, the Transporter not only evolved, but was completely revised periodically with variations referred to as versions "T1" to "T5," although only generations T1 to T3 (or T25 as it is rightly known) can be seen as directly related to the VW Beetle (see below for details).
The Type 2 was among the first commercial vehicles in which the driver was placed above the front wheels. As such, it started a trend, at least in Germany, where the Ford TransitThe Ford Transit is a van produced by the European division of the Ford Motor Company. It was originally introduced in 1965, and has been in continuous production in three basic generations to the present day (2004). 1 Transit was introduced to replace th among others quickly copied the concept. In the United States, the Corvair-based 1960 Chevrolet Corvan cargo van and Greenbrier passenger van even went so far as to copy the Type 2's rear-engine layout, using the Corvair's horizontally-opposed, air-cooled engine for power. Except for the Greenbrier and a mid-70s water-cooled version from FiatThis article is about Fiat the automobile manufacturer. Fiat is also an English word meaning the exercise of authority. See : Fiat money, Military fiat. The Latin phrase "fiat lux" is the motto of the University of California and means "let there be light, the 850 Microbus — neither of which were produced in great numbers — the VW remained unique in being rear-engined which was a disadvantage for the Panel Van which couldn't easily be loaded from the rear due to the engine cover intruding on interior space, but generally advantageous in terms of traction and interior noise.
Another trend that the VW Transporter may not have started, but that it certainly gave momentum to, is the use of nicely-trimmed commercial vans as people carriers. This first took hold in the United States in the 1960s, aided by very intelligent, tongue-in-cheek advertising by the Doyle Dane BernbachDoyle Dane Bernbach was an advertising agency famous in the 1950s and 1960s for its innovative campaigns for Volkswagen ("Think Small"), Avis ("We Try Harder"), and other companies. It was founded by Maxwell (Mac) Dane, Ned Doyle, and William Bernbach in agency.
During the hippieHippies (singular hippie or sometimes hippy were members of the 1960s counterculture movement who adopted a communal or nomadic lifestyle, renounced corporate nationalism and the Vietnam War, embraced aspects of Buddhism, Hinduism, and/or Native American era in the United States, the Bus became a major counterculture symbol since its boxy, utilitarian shape made it everything the American cars of the day were not. Used models were also incredibly cheap to buy. Since that time, however, the original 1950–1967 Type 2 has become a hot collector's item with special variations reaching into North American five-figure price territory. The second generation has also passed its low-price years and is on its way to collector status.