I am coming up on six years of Vanagon ownership in March of this year. Olly came to me by way of a dealership in Colorado. Before that he lived for a bit in the Pacific Northwest, but he began life in Texas like so many German immigrants. I take some measure of joy in the fact that I’ve brought him back “home.” Vans are rare in these parts.

I know all of this because of a CarFax report and some receipts I found in the van, but otherwise the previous owners are a mystery to me. I don’t know the names of these vanagonauts or the roads they travelled in Olly. I’d like to think that some of the longtime van owners out there passed Olly and exchanged a Vanagon wave during his 145,000 previous-to-me miles, but that’s purely fantasy.

What I do know is that Olly has been both loved and neglected. For the most part he came to me blessedly stock, although less than fully functional. I say “blessedly” not because I believe that a stock van is inherently better, but because it made learning about the ins and outs of Vanagons a lot easier in a place where there are few references other than Bentley and the list. Electrical gremlins are much easier to exorcize when the diagrams approximate reality.

That being said, there are signs-a-plenty that Olly has been captained by others. Patched metal, taped wires, jumped connections, POR-15’d spots, and stripped non-metric bolts point to both care and neglect. Most often I curse the previous owner’s bone-headedness, like when I find that BOTH the front door wiring harnesses were snipped instead of being disconnected properly just a few inches further under the dash.

It’s frustrating to stumble across such examples the PO’s handiwork while I’m in the middle of fixing something else, but lately I’ve been trying to view these scars as talismans. That the repairs were done at all is an indication that someone, somewhere along the way wanted to keep this van on the road a little longer. That those folks cared about this van, even if they lacked expertise or proper tools. Many vans are not so lucky. Mine was, and so it has to come to me.

For that I am grateful.

So I here’s to you, all you previous owners, for your stubbornness that kept the four wheels rolling even when you had no business trying. For your bravery in owning a Vanagon at all. And for your wisdom to pass the van (and the mess you made) on to someone else when the time came. I thank you.