1978 T2 Microbus (Type 2)

By 1978 the Type 2 Microbus had been in continuous production for 28 years. It had survived the Eisenhower administration, the Beatles, three oil crises, the EPA, and the Department of Transportation. It had watched American culture mutate through at least six distinct phases and emerged, at each turn, still recognizable as itself.

That kind of persistence requires either extraordinary mediocrity or extraordinary rightness. The Microbus was right — right for its size, right for its layout, right for the idea that nine people deserved to travel together without one of them getting the folding jump seat in the back of a station wagon.

The 1978 Microbus was the T2b Late Bay in its most refined people-moving configuration: forward control cabin, nine-passenger seating across three rows, the full-length greenhouse of a windshield that had become the Bus's signature.

The 2.0-liter Type 4 air-cooled flat-four made 70 horsepower DIN. The significant engineering news for 1978 was the hydraulic valve lifters — finally eliminating the periodic valve adjustments that had been a fixture of Type 4 ownership since 1971. New cylinder heads accompanied them, improving reliability and reducing maintenance intervals. This was a real improvement, not a marketing headline.

Interior trim on the Microbus was genuinely comfortable: two-tone vinyl seats in Phosphor/Como Green or Basalt/Silver Beige, full-length headliner in cloth or perforated vinyl, paneled walls in vinyl over masonite. Fixed upholstered benches that folded flat for cargo when the seats weren't needed for people. Simple, durable, easy to clean. The interior didn't try to be a car. It tried to be a room, and it succeeded.

The hydraulic lifters changed the ownership math. Before 1978, Type 4 engines required valve adjustments at regular intervals — not difficult, but requiring either mechanical competence or dealer visits. The 1978 engine eliminated this. It made the Microbus more accessible to people who wanted to drive it rather than maintain it.

But the deeper specialness of the 1978 Microbus was what it represented in the lineup: peak Bay Window. Everything VW had learned in 28 years of Bus production was present. The visibility. The packaging. The way the sliding side door opened onto a usable cabin rather than a narrow slot. The ease of loading and unloading that made parents, coaches, and anyone who moved people regularly choose it over alternatives that looked more modern but worked less well.

This was the second-to-last year. Production would end in 1979 for the German market and US market, replaced by the water-cooled T3 Vanagon. The engineers knew it. The people who'd been building them knew it. The 1978 Microbus was not rushed or cheapened at the end — it was improved.

1978 was the year of Grease, Animal House, and the Bee Gees. It was also the year of Jonestown, the neutron bomb debate, and the first commercial use of the word 'spam.' America was in a strange mood: nostalgic and anxious simultaneously, reaching for the 1950s with one hand and bracing for what came next with the other.

The Microbus absorbed all of it without changing. Families drove them to soccer practice and camping trips. Churches used them for youth groups. Small businesses converted them for transport. The counterculture remnants still had theirs from the 1960s and kept them patched together with baling wire and optimism.

What's remarkable in retrospect is how cross-cultural the Bus remained. It had become, by 1978, a genuinely neutral vehicle — claimed by no single tribe. The flower children had it. The suburban coaches had it. The commercial operators had it. The Westfalia buyers had a version of it. The Microbus served all of them without favoring any, which is either the definition of great design or of design that has outlasted its moment and become infrastructure.

The 1978 Microbus was not fast. This is not a criticism. Top speed was approximately 78 mph with optimal conditions and a following wind. Zero to 60 happened somewhere around 20 seconds. The four-speed manual required a comfortable relationship with momentum — plan your passes, descend hills in gear, be patient on on-ramps.

In exchange: a driving experience with almost nothing between you and the world outside. The enormous windshield put you at the center of every landscape. The tight turning circle made parking in city spaces manageable. The elevated seating position gave you visibility over most traffic. You weren't in traffic; you were observing it from a slight remove.

Passengers had genuine comfort. The bench seats were firm rather than plush, but the legroom was abundant, the headroom was real, and the sliding door opened onto the world without the narrow squeeze of a conventional vehicle. Nine people arrived at their destination as nine people rather than as a compressed mass of elbows and complaints.

Large families. Coaches and youth group leaders. Camp operators. Church van programs. Small shuttle operations. Resort properties that needed to move guests from parking to lodge. Anyone who needed to move more than four people and discovered that the Microbus cost less to buy, less to run, and less to maintain than any American van of comparable capacity.

The nine-passenger configuration was the Microbus's commercial calling card. American competitors of the era offered similar capacity in vehicles that were longer, wider, less fuel-efficient, and harder to park. The Bus was compact by comparison — which sounds paradoxical for a vehicle this size, but forward control design creates its own logic.

In 1978 you could buy a new Microbus for substantially less than a comparable American van. The total cost of ownership over three years made the VW even more competitive. The people who bought them for practical reasons — not cultural reasons — were often the most satisfied owners.

A 1978 Microbus in honest driving condition trades between $20,000 and $45,000. Restored examples with correct two-tone vinyl interiors and documented mechanical history approach $65,000. The hydraulic-lifter engine is a specific asset to note — it means the 1978 was the beginning of lower-maintenance Type 4 ownership.

Rust is the primary concern: floor pans, rocker panels, lower cab corners, the battery tray area, rear crossmember. California and Southwest buses are meaningfully better than East Coast and Midwest examples. Inspect underneath before anything else.

The market for late Bay Window buses has strengthened steadily. The 1978 occupies a sweet spot: final refinements, not-quite-final-year (which commands the premium 1979 does), and the hydraulic valve lifter upgrade that makes ownership more accessible. Parts availability for mechanical components is good. Body panels are harder. Find the cleanest example you can. The bones are more important than the surface.

The 1978 Microbus was the Type 2 at its most reliable and its most itself. Twenty-eight years of production had done what time does to honest designs — refined them to their essence. The hydraulic lifters were the last significant upgrade. Everything else had already been figured out.

It carried nine people across a country that was figuring out what it wanted to be, and it did so without opinion or pretense. Just glass, air, and 70 horsepower of flat-four conviction.

The ones that survive are worth finding. Because the 1978 was the penultimate sentence of a story that took three decades to tell. And the last sentences of good stories are always worth reading.