The Volkswagen ID.Buzz starts at $59,995, nearly three times the suggested retail price of the Type 2 bus.

When Volkswagen ID.Buzz Reveal Two years ago, the company sold it as “the rebirth of an icon” — that famous silhouette, the VW Bus and all its cultural influence, is finally back. However, Volkswagen has now announced pricing for the new bus, and it’s a departure from what made the Type 2 so great.

The new ID.Buzz, in North American spec, starts at $59,995 for the base rear-wheel-drive Pro S trim. Buyers who want all-wheel drive will need to upgrade not only to the Pro S Plus trim—$63,495—but also to the additional 4Motion option, for a total of $67,995.

Back in the heyday of the first bus, in 1967, It can cost as little as $2,150. — the equivalent of $20,555 today. To be fair, 1967 marked end T1’s run—by which point the stuff might have paid off—but it’s an interesting data point when you consider accessibility. Today’s potential van-dwelling, touring hippies need to spend nearly three times as much as their parents did. (It’s probably worth noting that most Dead fans I know in 2024, whether they’re older millennials or baby boomers, are well off. —ED)

But comparing MSRP to MSRP isn’t as straightforward a comparison as you might think. The average new car transaction price has far outpaced inflation, meaning it’s not really fair to compare the price of the ID.Buzz based solely on the latter. In 1967, aThe average new car transaction price is $3,215.That means a Kombi costs about 67 percent of the average price. Recent data suggests Average new car transaction price in 2024 is $48,644That means a modern bus would cost about $32,530 — still a little over half How much does ID.Buzz cost?

But even that doesn’t take into account larger economic factors. The median household income in the United States in 1967 was $7,200.That means T1 will cost about 30 percent of your gross pay — that’s four months’ pay, plus or minus. Estimated median household income in 2024 (we won’t get company data for a few years) bringing the figure to $78,171This would bring the price of the equivalent ID.Buzz to… $23,295? Wow. The first Volkswagen buses cheap.

Indeed, ID.Buzz’s best point of comparison might be the 1979 Bus—the final year of the T2 generation in the United States, at a time when Volkswagen was charging a premium above the average new-car transaction price. A ’79 Bus, based on the same average-price calculation, would cost just under $52,000 today. That’s not far off the $59,995 cost of the new car, but it’s also in a different league from the bus Volkswagen is trying to evoke, as is true of the rest of VW’s lineup.

VW wants the ID.Buzz to remind you of the original Type 2 bus, with its colorful paint scheme running down the front of the truck, but it’s missing a big reason why the old bus became iconic: People could actually buy them. Hippies could afford a T1 for a reasonable price, and the bus became inseparable from its recognizable beauty—a solid cultural cachet stamped on those 13 or 23 windows. With the new bus, Volkswagen is cashing in on that fame, but that means the new bus won’t have the same level of recognition as the first one. At least not out of the box. We’ll see how the secondhand market handles it..