Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 22:57:07 EDT

From: Larry Horn LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU

Subject: Re: minivan/microbus



Re the Great Minibus/Microvan debate: I too drove one--burgundy, with a bed in

back and curtains, but sans record-player, from its birth in 1971 to its

timely death in 1984, 120,000 miles and three engines later. (By that time,

there were cookie sheets under the rubber mats to cover the rusted-out body.)

Anyway, as I recall it, we called them "VW Vans" as a default; "microbus" was a

sort of term of art that evoked the relevant era and lifestyle, and "VW

microbus" might have been also used somewhat redundantly (I don't think anyone

ELSE made anything we called a microbus). But "(VW) minivan" was another

possibility, if I remember correctly, and was somewhat more politically and/or

sociologically neutral than "microbus".



Larry