I bought a 1969 VW Microbus, with a half-ton of garbage, no shovels or rakes, but I did get one Implement of Destruction.
Reasonably straight, no rust, no engine/trans or title. All the glass and rolling.
What do you think? I’ll tell you what I paid after the first few guesses…
No rust sounds to me like it was stored in a barn. Seller had no idea of what it was worth. You ended up getting it for $500.
$501!
Outside, High-Dry Desert. Got about 5 inches of dust in the front floorboards.
I paid A Grand. Figure its worth many times that.
I love old VW Buses, and Beetles; they were everywhere when I was a kid, and those are what I wanted to drive when I grew up.
These days, I recognize that they were terribly underpowered, and like pretty much any car from the '60s and '70s, not very safe at all by modern standards. I still love them, however.
Regular bus, or camper version? If a camper, is it factory or after-market?
A no engine, no transmission, no title Type 2B,and you paid a thousand dollars?
Is it the van version, the microbus version or the pick-up version?
A friend of mine had one, an early 70s model camper, in Zimbabwe. My girlfriend and I hitchhiked the 2500km from Cape Town with some auto paint, and we went full on hippie with the paint job. We wrapped the front mounted spare tyre with a cloth with Jim Morrison’s face on it.
Then four of us took a long, slow (underpowered is correct) drive down to Cape Town for the 2000 New Years eve, sleeping on the roadside and avoiding toll roads because we had very little money.
Highlights include being given beer by a stranger at a traffic stop in one of the most conservative towns, nearly losing a front tyre due to lug nuts coming loose on a very mountainous pass, and picking up a dreadlocked hitchhiker, who proceeded to roll a massive joint… only to discover none of us “hippies” smoked marijuana, so he had to finish it himself.
@Gatopescado - I hope you have as much fun with it as we did.
It says microbus in the op.
You going to electrify it? I think the Ford Focus engine shoehorns in there pretty well, also, but electric would be super cool.
A rolling chassis tends to go for around $2000 to $3000 around here, but that’s with a title. The only one I have seen recently with no title was going for $500 but it was a rust bucket.
A buddy of mine has one, I think he had some sort of Porsche or upgraded VW engine installed. Definitely not underpowered, it scoots just fine along uphill grades. Probably cost a small fortune, but it is a fun ride.
What can you do w/o a title?
Make it a rebuild project while doing a title search?
Depends on your state.
In PA, you’re pretty much screwed. The law only allows for the transfer of title from one person to another. There is no provision in the law to create a new title and no procedure to go through to get the title restored.
If you can, get the original owner to get a duplicate title. If the original owner has died and the title is lost, there are procedures so that his heirs can get a duplicate title, though they’ll have to jump through some hoops to do so.
You can possibly try to get a salvage title for it, but I’m not sure how that works. Your other option is to petition the court to give you a title, which most folks say isn’t worth the hassle unless the vehicle is really worth it to you.
I don’t know how well this works (or if it works) but apparently Vermont does not require titles for vehicles that are more than 10 years old. So what I have been told is that even if you’re not a Vermont resident, as long as the vehicle is more than 10 years old, you can get it titled there and then use the new title to transfer it to your state. Seems a little iffy to me.
Most of the states I am familiar with have restrictions similar to PA, but I believe some states are much less restrictive. In some states you can get a bonded title. After some period (5 years, maybe?) if the original title owner has not come forwards and claimed the title, you can get the bond removed and have a normal title for the vehicle.
I wouldn’t touch a vehicle without a title. I know someone that bought a 70’s Porsche that did not have a title, the seller claimed it belonged to his father and that he would supply the title when they found it. 3 years and $15,000 later, he found out it was stolen. He not only lost the car but all the money he had in it.
I think it’s 15 years, but this is pretty common among classic/vintage vehicle restorers.
You don’t mean something like this, do you? And that is a Brazilian built model, something that is generally frowned upon in places where they claim to know a thing or two about classic cars, i.e. Germany. OK, that dealer is a bit optimistic in his asking price, but your barn find makes me jealous. Congratulations! Pictures perhaps? Just to rub it in 
I have an old Beetle. It’s currently being a bit ornery with some carburetor issues, but it’s a fun little car to drive. If you need a car with air conditioning, power steering, or power brakes (or something safer than having the gas tank right in front of your face) then it’s probably not for you.
My Beetle has the 1.6 VW engine, and yeah, it’s not going to win any races. There are a lot of Porsche engines that can fit into a Beetle or a Bus, but most of them don’t just bolt right in and call it a day. Usually there’s some fabrication involved and sometimes you have to swap out certain parts so that the engine cover will close. If you aren’t willing to modify the engine cover, that does limit the size of the engine that you can fit.
I don’t know if the OP wants to flip their bus or restore it. If they want to restore it, the 1.6 engine isn’t too bad, but again, not going to win any races. They also have some dual carb performance engines out there that will fit into a bus without modification that have a lot more power than the original VW engine.
Having all of the glass is a big bonus. No rust is really good, too.
JBugs is a good web site for parts.
Don’t know what they did in Brazil but the last 23 window bus in North America was, I believe, in '63. '69 would look like this.