A Groovy New VW Microbus? Not So Fast

O.K., fellow baby boomers and aging hippies: don't get too excited about this because there's no guarantee that Volkswagen is going to put this vehicle into production, but at the Geneva Auto Show this week (one presumes that's Geneva, Switzerland, not Geneva, New York), VW is showing off a new version of its much revered Microbus, the vehicle that moved more pot around the United States in the 1960s than a fleet of 727s belonging to a Colombian drug cartel. The new Microbus is electric powered and gets up to 186 miles on a single charge; about what the average hippie got on a single charge of whatever substance he or she was using for fuel in 1968. And instead of a bunsen burner for heat, the new version has a state-of-the-art climate control system which begs the question: why can't we deploy one for the entire Earth to head off global warming? There's also no need to hook up a turntable, receiver and a set of large Advent speakers in the new Microbus because the "entertainment system" is controlled by an iPad. It used to be that the entertainment system in a VW Microbus was a radio controlled by your friend Paul who was so stoned he kept hitting AM instead of FM and was always really bummed when they played the short version of "Light My Fire."

But crankyjewishguy's (CJG) beef with the new Microbus has less to do with the fact that it has all these fancy amenities that the old spartan Microbus lacked, and more to do with the fact that it would look very much at home in a circular driveway in Greenwich, Connecticut while the old version looked totally at home in a vacant lot in Oakland. Really. Compare this:

With these:

Seriously, are we talking about the same vehicle here? CJG thinks not and given the choice he'd pick the Groovy version over the Greenwich version any day.