the3rdrock.com

Volkswagen

Wel­come to my vir­tual Volk­swa­gen museum. Here you’ll find pho­tos and info’ on the vari­ous cars and items in my collection.

Con­struct­ive feed­back is always welcome!

• The Cars
• What is a Fleetline?
• The Items

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The Cars

’67 ambu­lance

Com­ing soon…

’67 Type 1 T1 (Ger­man [LHD] metal sunroof)

Com­ing soon…

’67 Crew­cab

Com­ing soon…

’74 Fleet­line Kombi

Com­ing soon…

‘7x Fleet­line Kombi

Com­ing soon…

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What is a Fleetline?

The major­ity of people who remem­ber “split-window Kombis” in South Africa refer to them as “Fleet­lines”. They’re usu­ally wrong. Con­fused? I’m not surprised…VW ‘bus’ know­ledge in South Africa is atrocious.

What’s more dis­turb­ing is the fact that ask­ing VWSA for a clue is about as use­less as the wing on the back of a Toyota Corolla. VWSA never kept accur­ate records — which means all of the after­mar­ket com­pen­di­ums avail­able are also erro­neous — and the records they did keep were kept in a mass of boxes in a for­got­ten room in Port Eliza­beth, pre­sum­ably on the grounds of the fact­ory. This room fell vic­tim to a fire some years ago.

Very little of that inform­a­tion survived.

What the Fleet­line com­munity has been able to ascer­tain is as follows…

Fleet­lines were sold along­side their ‘mod­ern’ coun­ter­parts and cost roughly R 200 less than the equi­val­ent “Bay­win­dow” of the time.

Whilst the Ger­many T1s had ceased pro­duc­tion at the end of August ’67, Brasil had con­tin­ued build­ing their own oddball vari­ety. The Fleet­lines were the last buses of this gen­er­a­tion that they — and any­one else — built.

Their pro­duc­tion and sale eight years after the demise of the Ger­man T1 caused fairly wide­spread jok­ing and laughter, but VWSA had the last laugh — because they sold, quite well indeed.

An estim­ated count of roughly five-and-a-half thou­sand buses were produced.

Fleet­lines were Bra­silian CKDs (“Com­plete Knock-Downs”, or kits) which arrived by ship at Port Elizabeth.

There was a rumour that they were shipped on top of the deck in order to save costs, but unless they’re con­struc­ted from Krypton­ite, we can con­fid­ently say that story is rather far-fetched, at best.

In the tough eco­nomic cli­mate of the mid’ ‘70s South Africa, every sav­ing coun­ted, hence Fleet­lines were thought up.

The pri­cing in Novem­ber of 1974 was as follows:

• Pickup: R 2,420.00
• Panel van: R 2,575.00
• Kombi: R 2,880.00

Fleet­lines were avail­able from Octo­ber of 1974 until March of 1976.

The pickup was a metal wide­body. It util­ised a snorkel for the engine air intake; it col­lec­ted just behind the left rear corner of the cab.

The only other wide­body pickup avail­able in T1 form­a­tion was a wooden vari­ant on the defunct Ger­man range. It was coach­built by West­falia for VW.

There is no inform­a­tion avail­able on why VWSA termed the people trans­porter the “Kombi”. This has pre­vi­ously been applied to a higher spec’ 11-window Ger­man bus. 15-windows had been reserved for Deluxe mod­els in the Ger­man range.

There is no inform­a­tion avail­able on why VWSA used the name “Fleet­line”. It had been pre­vi­ously applied to other vehicu­lar makes.

Fleet­lines were fit­ted with VWSA-built 1600 TP engines, and they were the only T1 buses to ever use this engine. They were equipped with the ‘HD’-style oil-bath air fil­ters, as South Africa was con­sidered a “dusty’ locale.

Because Fleet­lines were a budget-beating vehicle , a lot of quick-thinking went into the build. Ini­tially they were impor­ted as near-complete kits, but as the months went by, impor­ted items were changed for locally-manufactured goods in order to cut down on the heavy import taxes incurred at that stage, the obvi­ous example being the rear corner glass (the rest of the glass was already a local product). As such, the chan­ging corner win­dow mark­ings are a handy way to nar­row down the month of pro­duc­tion of a Fleetline.

Another rumour that per­sists is that of “metal qual­ity”. Fleet­lines were built using the same steel and the same presses, but to save costs they were never dipped against rust like their Ger­man coun­ter­parts. It is no lie that they are prone to rust issues easier and more wide­spread than the Ger­man buses.

Because Fleet­lines were the end of the run, they are rather bizarre when com­pared to their earlier cous­ins. They util­ise a mid’ ‘50s shell with late Ger­man run­ning gear and the afore­men­tioned 1600 TP engine. The interior is a mix of the years. The bump­ers are US spe­cific­a­tion (“towel rails”). They are the only bus to have an embossed logo on the nose and their right side shows a tell­tale sign of their body con­ver­sion from LHD to RHD, a seam. Again, the seam is unique to a Fleet­line. Their dash car­ries a slot for a radio, but no slots for the speaker. Their indic­ator unit is unique, as is their floormat up front. Their interior mir­ror is also a unique item; a black plastic square-ish item. The out­side mir­rors were sup­plied by Stirl­ing [Durban].

The pan­els were Mason­ite, painted brown and the seats were brown leath­er­ette with fibre panels.

Fleet­lines were fit­ted with a unique pedal pan.

It is an assump­tion that Fleet­lines were doled out to crews to assemble in the fact­ory with whichever parts were avail­able to them.

At the time of com­pos­ing this art­icle, I own two very ori­ginal Fleet­line Kombis and they are a mis­cel­lany of inex­plic­able dif­fer­ences. Restor­ing a Fleet­line to ‘ori­ginal’ would largely rely on the state you received yours in. I have noted dif­fer­ent hard­ware man­u­fac­tur­ers, dif­fer­ent lay­outs in the bat­tery areas (actual metal dif­fer­ences), altern­ate wir­ing rout­ing and a vari­ety of other not­able differences.

What is an ori­ginal Fleetline?

Fleet­lines were issued with their own spe­cific Owner’s Manual. It was avail­able in Eng­lish and Afrikaans.

After the T1 shell was killed off, VWSA released a new bus, this time with the Fleet­line rear and a ’72+ “Bay­win­dow” front. This oddball vehicle used uni­ver­sal joints instead of the then CV joints. It wasn’t pop­u­lar and didn’t last long.

The above is the res­ult of a col­lect­ive know­ledge gained over a period of many years. If you have some­thing to add, or cor­rect, please make contact.

I will add pho­tos as and when avail­able. Please check back peri­od­ic­ally for updates on this.

Look­ing for clas­sic Volk­swa­gen style for your next shoot, wed­ding or event in ZA?

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The Items