1975 Volkswagen Type 2 Split screen, 1.6 twin port

This 1975 Volkswagen Type 2 is finished in red over white and is offered from Knysna by knysna_kombi, about this seller, its second owner in South Africa and the keeper of the bus for nineteen years. It runs a 1.6 litre twin port air cooled flat four through the four speed manual and shows 88,400km since the restoration was completed in 2015.

It is a split screen built in 1975, which is the fact the listing turns on. Germany stopped building this body in 1967. Brazil carried on with it, and this bus came off that line and was imported into South Africa in 1978, with the clearing documents published alongside the NATIS certificate.

The restoration ran from 2011 to 2015. The restorer photographed the shell in bare metal before any filler or paint went near it, 140 frames, and those photographs are published in full rather than summarised. They show the cargo floor section let in on the left hand side, which is also on the flaws list and visible from underneath on the lift photographs taken for this listing.

The engine is not the one the bus was built with. The original dropped a valve seat in 2017 and a later 1.6 twin port went in, invoiced, with the removed unit photographed before it left the workshop. The seller states the flaws as the replacement engine, the visible floor seam, a sliding door that drops on its runner, a reproduction roof rack whose rear feet sit on sealant, and no belts on the middle or rear bench.

One question was declined. Asked to account for what happened between the 2011 shell photographs and the 2015 completion, the seller said the restorer has since closed and he will not describe work he did not watch being done. The gap is four years and the transcript carries his reason in full.

The split screen Type 2 is the first generation, built in Hanover from 1950 and replaced in Germany by the bay window in 1967. Brazil kept the old body in production long after Europe had moved on, because it was cheap to tool and the market wanted it, and those cars carried later running gear behind the earlier face. A 1975 split screen is a Brazilian car or it is a fake, and the paperwork is the only thing that tells you which.

In South Africa the Kombi was transport rather than a collectible for most of its life: a builder's bus, a farm bus, a surf bus on this coast. That is why the survivors are mostly rebuilt shells. The floors, the jacking points, the battery trays and the lower cargo door corners go first, and a coastal bus that has never been apart is close to a myth.

The market here values the split screen face far above the bay window, which is why the underside and the paperwork matter more on this model than on almost anything else on the site. A bare metal photograph set from a competent restorer is worth more than any description of it.