Happy 70th Birthday, Miss Sofie!

This T1 Bulli from 1950 is the world’s oldest street-legal VW bus and is kept in VWCV’s Classic Vehicles collection in Hannover.

On 8 March 1950 the Volkswagen plant began full production of the Type 2, which quickly became the darling of the commercial trades. As did this panel van with chassis number 20-1880, which was built on 5 August 1950.

For its new owner it was something significant, the first Bulli in Lower Saxony and for 23 years it drove around the narrow lanes of Hildesheim before going into retirement when the company sold it to a collector.

From 1973 to 1992 the Bulli spent its time with various VW enthusiasts. The last owner tried to the sell it via a magazine run by the ‘Brezelfenstervereinigung e.V.’ fan club without success. From today’s perspective that’s unimaginable, but demand back then for a used commercial vehicle wasn’t great. After multiple ads without photo and just three lines of text, Dane Tonny L. become aware of it and called the seller. After learning that the vehicle had the lowest chassis number known at that time, he bought it unseen.