It's that time of year again! VW is teasing us with yet another Microbus concept that we will most likely never see on the road. This time, they're at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas but we'll get to that later. Every time news like this comes out, a lot of bogus stories surface with recycled, inaccurate images. So this is a little history on Microbus concepts.

2001



Volkswagen first teased us with this concept vehicle back in 2001 and this one seemed destined for production. Though at the time it was considered ugly with its un-bus-like square headlights, looking back on this I've warmed up to it quite a bit. It's probably the closest we'd ever get to a modern "bus" and I even have a couple of toys based on this guy.



Along the way, someone photoshopped this picture and gave it a more bus-like front end: round headlights and a less angular nose, throwing it back to the Splitty. Though it's obviously fake, this image still gets circulated in news articles!

2007



This is the Volkswagen Space up! blue concept, a bigger version of the up! (annoyingly styled with an exclamation point, like Yahoo!). While the up! made it into production as a European city car (also branded as SEAT and Skoda cars) we were spared from the Space up! and Space up! blue (electric version). Probably for the best, it's pretty hard to look at although it did have some skylight windows on the roof reminiscent of a deluxe 21 window.

2008

After failing to bring any of these to production, Volkswagen rebadged a Dodge Caravan. We all know how that turned out.

2009



This one doesn't come from Volkswagen, but rather it's the renderings of a Canadian designer and it's known as the Verider. This one gets passed off a lot as authentic, even though it never existed as anything other than pixels. Still, this is the only concept that was actually a camper, and who wouldn't want to go camping in this thing?

2011



Volkswagen got our hopes up again with the Bulli, an electric concept that seemed to share a little bit of DNA with a bus. At least the colors are right. It had an iPad in the dash and was supposed to come out in 2014 and obviously that didn't happen.

2016



After Dieselgate, Volkswagen would like us to forget about emissions so they tease us again with an electric bus-like concept at CES this year. Like Lor San Tekka said at the beginning of The Force Awakens, "This will begin to make things right." Will this one actually be made? Probably not, but the platform this concept is built on will probably serve as the basis for upcoming electric, non-bus cars.

So there you have it, 15 years of bus concept vehicles that none of us will ever get to drive.

First line from the article: "Well it ain't no microbus." I couldn't agree more. Let's see a camper concept though!

It's starting to look a lot more like a Kia Soul than a microbus.

I disagree. With the new swing of panel vans like the Transit and Sprinter, VW could make a very similar design, keep it tight and efficient, while maintaining the cargo capacity and versatility. We noticed that every major manufacturer, from Ford to Chrysler to Nissan had an option at the Detroit Autoshow and they all looked like modern day VW buses. The microbus was just ahead of its time. VW could jump into that race again, but making it a passenger vehicle won't do. They would have to make it the Kombi that it once was.

Well supposedly we have one entering production. Back in January at the Detroit Auto Show, Volkswagen showed off the I.D. Buzz Concept electric vehicle. It certainly looks like a bus, though I wonder why they dressed it in yellow instead of the classic red and white.



Just a couple of days ago, Volkswagen made it official and announced the concept is going to production, and will be introduced as a 2020 model. A lot could change between now and then, as a lot of prototypes undergo heavy changes before coming out the factory doors.

But what do you think? This, after 16 years of teasing, is apparently what we are finally getting.

I agree!