Picture Car Confidential: The ID Buzz Is No Reborn Bus

Volkswagen was kind enough to fly me out to San Francisco last month, along with several hundred of its other closest friends. Journalists and influencers from around the world arrived like clockwork in 36-hour waves over the course of a week for a long morning’s drive in the company’s new ID Buzz, the designated spiritual descendant of the fondly remembered old Microbus. Given the seven-year wait from the first showing of the Buzz concept and a 23-year gap (a world record, if I’m not mistaken) from the preceding 2001 Microbus concept that never came to be, the curiosity was strong.

After landing, a typically riveting German-themed technical and marketing session that first evening kicked things off. Dinner followed, then off to bed for an early start. Here then was our next day’s agenda in full:

First, zig-zag Buzz convoy slowly down famous Lombard Street for a photo op. Second, head north over the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County, where the roads are comparatively wide open, and the vibes are as mellow as you might hope to find in an idyllic place with pleasant weather, ocean breezes, and an abundant supply of rich Californians. Then, wrapping up after a light lunch of locally harvested oysters—making the brief run even more meaningful for the oyster lovers among us—we were to return to the hotel.

Speaking of rich, if you are so blessed and itching for a new EV, you might be interested in the ID Buzz, whose $61,545 starting price can easily rise to $71,545 for an AWD First Edition model. I’m sorry, did I say starting? I meant startling. In 1961, one of its early glory years, the Type 2 (the factory’s internal name) sold in America for $2495, roughly $27,000 in 2024 dollars. Today’s model is more than twice as expensive. The horror!

But, folks, I kid. It is what it is, not much more to be said. Not that this stopped the chatter, price the main issue the press corps—experts to a one—chose to grumble about the day I was there. I get their point.  It’s hard to argue that the Buzz’ MSRP won’t cap demand, even if it is priced similarly to the few quality competitors that can also realistically promise to transport the whole team to the game with electric power. The Kia EV9 and Mercedes Benz EQB, for instance, are only fractionally cheaper, while the Rivian R1S, Volvo EX90, Mercedes EQS, and Tesla Models X and Y are more expensive, as will be the Cadillac Escalade IQ and Lucid Gravity, only more so. Meaning the pricing is not out of whack with the competition.

Another important thing to remember? The old Type 2—aka Kombi and Transporter, the funky buses that carried our sainted forefathers to the love-in nearly three score and 17 bong hits ago—it is not. Comparing the ID Buzz to the old-timer is silly.

Upon my initial short acquaintance in San Francisco with additional time spent behind its wheel in southern California as a juror with the World Car of the Year (WCOTY) awards, it’s my belief that the ID Buzz is well-resolved, with performance, dynamics, comfort, and safety that make it perfectly pleasant to drive and worth more than twice as much money as its predecessor. It’s faster, quieter, safer, and it stops better, all the while polluting less, things which, along with the modern vehicle’s suite of telematic and safety wonders, cost money. And it looks different, an added plus in these days of samey sameness. A de facto minivan with a little pizazz. I’m for all that.

Those vintage 21- and 23-window VW buses that haul in hefty six-figure auction prices are cool to look at, and I wouldn’t mind taking a ride in one again someday. I would graciously accept one as a birthday present. But I’m here to tell you, as one who was there close enough to the actual day to have driven them, that they’re not all they’re cracked up to be. Rather than regale you with a column full of memories from when we were young, I will instead regale you with just a few. 

In one formative early incident, I was a disaffected seven-year-old growing up near the George Washington Bridge that connects New York City’s Manhattan and everything to the east and the north with New Jersey. A family friend was coming to visit us Jersey Kitmans from the New York side of the river, driving their Microbus. After arriving unannounced about an hour late (no cell phones, remember), they finally showed up. Turns out they’d been stopped by the police, who’d explained that whenever wind speeds exceeded 30 mph, bridge policy dictated that Microbuses weren’t allowed to make the crossing over the mighty Hudson because gusts often tipped them over. They’d have to wait till the wind died down. A memorable data point.

Back in 1975, a high school buddy, Jon Gavzer, bought a running but otherwise frightful 21-window 1961 bus with a ragtop sunroof (also in appalling condition) for $350. It wasn’t long before he invited recently-licensed me, who knew more about cars (not much in my case versus his nothing) to drive it. Looked kind of cool and I’d always wondered what they were about. 

Hopping into its driver’s seat and heading out nose-forward, I approached the steep hill upon which a driveway connected the family garage with the street below. Easing into first gear, I had nary a second to consider the practical meaning of its incredibly feeble 40 horsepower before the worst brakes I’d ever encountered proved not up to the task, sending us rolling down the drive, blindly into the road, and headed straight for a tree on the far side of the road (no traffic, thank goodness). Luckily, by standing up to bring extra weight to bear on the brake pedal I was able to stop it just before I hit the curb, then the tree. Despite a green teenager’s understanding of vehicle dynamics, I also didn’t opt for the 90-degree turn onto the street at speed. I reasoned, in the moment, that such a maneuver might flip the bus over. Today I’m certain of it. 

Now, it isn’t fair to judge all old VW buses by that admittedly tired example. But it was—and remains—a great way to consider just how dangerous these things really were. With nothing in front of you but a steering wheel, some skimpy sheet metal, and an up-close-and-personal windshield, the latter would have been my first stop if I hit a tree or anything else in a Type 2. My legs and feet and the rest of my body would also have been in the direct line of fire. 

A new Bus, heavily revised for 1968, purchased by my best friend’s family, provided a fairer baseline from which to assess the Volkswagen. Reasonably low miles and in decent shape (it moved early in its life to Berkeley, California), it was a pretty good example when I got to it in 1975, expecting big things. On the bright side, it always started, it wasn’t rusty (yet), and you could fit a lot of people and belongings in it, with room to spare. All great stuff. Beyond which, however, it was as slow as an anesthetized garden snail, with unimpressive handling, braking, and—you guessed it—crosswind stability issues. Tall and tippy, it made an ear-splitting racket at all times, not just at highway speeds but in local driving. Along with the wooden brakes, nervous steering, and the shift linkage’s long journey to the transmission set to the back of the car, driving it was a buzz-killing full-time chore. Next to the Bus, the parental unit’s Volvo 122S wagon was a Ferrari 250 Lusso.

I’ll grant you that the new ID Buzz doesn’t look as whimsical and cute as the original Bus did and does. But, in fairness, the original has had the better part of three-quarters of a century to seep into our subconscious minds and percolate. And, like I said, the new one doesn’t look like everything else on the road—a big plus. Two-tone paint jobs always win my vote.

One assumes VW wants demand, who doesn’t, but in today’s environment making money is more important than market share. Don’t forget the $40 billion hole Volkswagen dug itself with Dieselgate penalties, a hole that might more fairly have snared to the same degree just about every other carmaker out there (diesel cheating was rampant), along with the Robert Bosch company, but that’s another story. Point is, Volkswagen will charge what it thinks it has to charge. In 1961, the company sold 23,300 Transporters to Americans. If that many electric ID Buzzes sell in the 2025 model year, VW can consider itself lucky.

One thing I learned in San Francisco is that you’re not supposed to call the ID Buzz the id Buzz. For as Freud memorably concluded, the id is the primitive part of all people, the joystick controller of the mind’s sexual and aggressive impulses. And while very much intended to be seen and marketed as the rebirth of Volkswagen’s legendary Type 2, the Buzz is meant to be a buzz, creating happy new memories while stirring up happy old ones, not intended to undergird sexy or aggressive ideation. Though it must be admitted that the old Bus saw its fair share of babymaking. 

So far, VW hasn’t played the hippie love wagon card yet, but who knows? It’s hard to predict what sticks and it’s out there to be tried. I wouldn’t call the Buzz sexy, myself. But I like it and predict that it will succeed in a niche role, with sales more like the EuroVan’s than the ur-Bus at its peak, even if it is an astonishingly better car than its inspirer. More astonishing would be if it wasn’t.

Starting in 2025 and going forward, the ID Buzz is just as capable of helping make happy memories as any old VW Bus. And, with what those old buses go for nowadays, it’s definitely cheaper.