Time to Roam Magazine Issue 3 - June/July 2013 | Page 14

Daniel Linnet

and tug their jaded parents’ arms, pointing
at the Kombi. It’s surely not merely their
remote resemblance to an ice-cream van that
is attracting a new generation of fans. To the
uneducated eye, from the outside, Kombis
look similar. Their mysterious interior,
when revealed, amazes the uninitiated.
The compact campervan facilities rival the
imagination of any modern day Swedish
designer whose domestic layouts boast
compact living in just twenty square metres.
In a Kombi, it is all packed into a clever four
and a half square metres. Elevating roofs
popping up in all directions mean Kombis can
maximise their space when stationary. They
truly deserve to be leaders in the ‘transformer’
category of vehicles.
Kombis were mostly available in the
form of either microbus, campervan,
panel van or ute. The microbus was able
to transport up to eight passengers, well
before the ‘people movers’ of the modern
day. The panel van was popular amongst
salesmen and couriers and the ute satisfied
the requirements of the Australian tradies.
Most Kombi campervans were fitted
out with at least one double bed, storage

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space, fridge, gas cooking facilities, a
table for eating and a sink for washing
up. Additional awnings to increase living
space were available as optional extras for
those whose needs were greater than the
standard number of available berths.
Kombis were imported to Australia as a basic
blank canvas and fitted out as campervans
by companies in Australia such as Swagman,
Sopru and Trakka. In the UK there was a
wider variety of companies doing their own
fit-outs, such as Viking, Devon, Dormobile
and Danbury. They all varied in the details of
the interior fit-out and had a range of elevating
canvas roof styles. Only the Westfalia was
available from the German dealership before
1973 if you ordered a campervan model.
After this, Devon was also available through
Volkswagen. Rather cleverly, Volkswagen
ran a scheme called the Tourist Delivery
Program, which enabled the foreign buyer
to take a European holiday in their newly
purchased Kombi van before VW would ship
their purchase home. This scheme added to
the popularity of the Westfalia in the USA, but
fewer imports of the Westfalia model exist in
Australia, making right-hand drive Westfalias

highly sought after and rare today in both the
UK and Australia.
The excesses of social gatherings become
easier to negotiate when a Kombi has been
used as the means of arrival. The convenience
to bed down in familiar surroundings
immediately, rather than having to navigate
into the cold of night, or trouble the host of
the party after the coffee has been served, is
another asset to owning a Kombi.
In the 1980s there were several mountain
workers who combated the shortage of
alpine accommodation, reduced their
cost of living and hazardous daily travel
to the NSW ski slopes by parking at the
bottom of the ski slopes in their own
self-contained mobile micro apartments,
Kombis. Many Kombi owners and exowners over the years admit to extended
periods of time living in their Kombi.
From one generation to the next, the
habit is transferred. Those children whose
parents owned a Kombi at some point have
inadvertently planted a seed which germinates
through feelings of nostalgia into a desire to
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