Building Brand New Classic VW Buses Is Harder Than It Looks

Classic Steel creates all-new Volkswagen bus bodies for modernized vintage rides.

Dan Carney, Senior Editor

July 20, 2023

4 Min Read
1967 Volkswagen Type2 21-Window Bus.jpg
Classic VW buses as nice as this one (which belongs to the company) are hard to find and are quite expensive, so Classic Steel offers brand new steel sheetmetal to recreate this classic style.Volkswagen

While we are familiar with the engineering work that goes into building new vehicles, it might be less obvious that significant engineering also goes into remaking old ones.

That’s the case at Classic Steel, an Ohio company that specializes in providing new sheetmetal for vintage Volkswagen models, especially for the classic first-generation VW bus.

A key challenge is to gather accurate dimensional data on each of the panels because the original specifications aren’t available and the existing machines have distorted so much over their six-decade lives that no two are the same and none of them is a reliable representative of the type, reports Mark Bowman, president of Classic Steel Body.

The company doesn’t only make replacement parts to repair old vans; they also produce complete body panel sets and assembles them into new bodyshells to create all-new vans. Such a body shell costs $30,000, but compared to the prices of nice Volkswagen vans or to the cost of restoring rusty ones, such a price can still look attractive to VW bus fans.

Classic Steel begins the process by scanning the outside of the part they aim to recreate. “Then you have to cut it up and scan the inside to create a 3D scan,” said Bowman. When Bowman started making classic VW parts, the 3D scans required $20,000 machines that were operated by specialists, but today he can scan most parts in his own shop using more affordable scanning tools.

Complicated parts can take as long as three years to go from scanning them to getting the final parts back from the stamping contractor in Taiwan, said Bowman. The average part takes about a year.

Following the part scan, Classic Steel makes its own examples of the parts. When it has two suitable examples, it sends them to GT Stampings in Taiwan, which is the company that also provides replacement parts for companies that specialize in other vehicles like Ford Broncos and Mustangs.

Remembering Classic VW Beetles

Creating a VW bus requires 101 separate pieces compared to only 38 pieces for a classic Bronco, so the bus takes a lot more time and effort to assemble in addition to needing more stampings.

GT Stampings creates production examples and returns them to Classic Steel for approval. “We try to fit them to a bus and sometimes they will be too long or have a mounting tab in the wrong place,” Bowman explained. Classic Steel informs GT Stampings of the necessary adjustments and gets another round of sample parts. Sometimes these parts fit, “but sometimes they send the part back and something different is wrong,” he said.

Eventually, the two sides hash it out and Classic Steel gets correct parts to provide customers. Then customers might complain that the parts don’t fit their old van if they haven’t ordered an all-new body shell.

VW bus body panels

It takes 101 different stampings to create one of Classic Steel's VW bus bodies.

That’s because the bodies on the old vans have sagged as surely as those of their drivers during the intervening decades, Bowman points out. “People believe that however their bus is, is how it should be,” he said. “Your bus has been flexing for 50 years.” Not only that, but buses came from the German and Brazilian plants that might have had their own variations when new.

Bowman said that Classic Steel would like to eliminate some of the back-and-forth process by sourcing stampings in the U.S. Some aspects of this notion are practical, but other aspects simply don’t pencil out, he said.

“We are working to have some more of our parts to be pressed in the U.S.,” Bowman explained. But the initial process to design and build the dies to stamp parts is prohibitively costly in the U.S. “It is five times as expensive to have one built over here,” he said. “It is $50,000 in the U.S. versus $10,000 in Taiwan.

VW Bus Classic Steel.jpg

A classic VW bus made using a new Classic Steel body from Kindred Motorsports. It has an electric drivetrain providing green propulsion.

However, at that point, Custom Steel owns the dies and can use them where they choose. “There are plenty of people who own presses,” he observed.

So for some parts at least, it could pay off to stamp them in the U.S., which is also more costly than stamping them in Taiwan. “I don’t have to ship it, so I don’t have to worry about ocean freight and customs,” Bowman said. “To just eliminate those allows you to pay a little more for the stampings. But we’d never be able to pay for the building of the stamps and the design work here initially.”

So if the new ID.Buzz EV isn’t exactly what you’re looking for in a retro VW bus, there’s the option of an all-new old one built on a Classic Steel body. These typically cost about $80,000 complete and are usually powered by electric motors or modern, water-cooled, fuel-injected Subaru flat-four-cylinder engines rather than old air-cooled VW units, he said. Either way, you’ll be rolling in style, surrounded by all-new steel sheetmetal in a classic design.

About the Author

Dan Carney

Senior Editor, Design News

Dan’s coverage of the auto industry over three decades has taken him to the racetracks, automotive engineering centers, vehicle simulators, wind tunnels, and crash-test labs of the world.

A member of the North American Car, Truck, and Utility of the Year jury, Dan also contributes car reviews to Popular Science magazine, serves on the International Engine of the Year jury, and has judged the collegiate Formula SAE competition.

Dan is a winner of the International Motor Press Association's Ken Purdy Award for automotive writing, as well as the National Motorsports Press Association's award for magazine writing and the Washington Automotive Press Association's Golden Quill award.

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He has held a Sports Car Club of America racing license since 1991, is an SCCA National race winner, two-time SCCA Runoffs competitor in Formula F, and an Old Dominion Region Driver of the Year award winner. Co-drove a Ford Focus 1.0-liter EcoBoost to 16 Federation Internationale de l’Automobile-accredited world speed records over distances from just under 1km to over 4,104km at the CERAM test circuit in Mortefontaine, France.

He was also a longtime contributor to the Society of Automotive Engineers' Automotive Engineering International magazine.

He specializes in analyzing technical developments, particularly in the areas of motorsports, efficiency, and safety.

He has been published in The New York Times, NBC News, Motor Trend, Popular Mechanics, The Washington Post, Hagerty, AutoTrader.com, Maxim, RaceCar Engineering, AutoWeek, Virginia Living, and others.

Dan has authored books on the Honda S2000 and Dodge Viper sports cars and contributed automotive content to the consumer finance book, Fight For Your Money.

He is a member and past president of the Washington Automotive Press Association and is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers

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