California Hotel

There have been hundreds of Camper conversions companies over the years, but only one has consistently produced top quality conversions worthy of being sold directly via VW dealerships. Let’s take a look at one.

- Paul Knight

In a world seemingly full of modified Vans and self-converted Campers, it’s quite refreshing to stumble across a totally stock and unmolested Type 25 California. We actually stumbled across this particular example while discussing classic air-cooled Buses with our old friend, Andreas Berger who hails from Wuerselen in Germany.

49-year old Andreas and his wife, Josi, are VW show regulars, however this 1990 1.6TD Westfalia is a little more modern than his other VWs (an unrestored Split Window Fire truck and a lovely, stock Oval window Beetle being the latest in a long line of classics). In fact, we only stumbled across the Cali as it was parked alongside the Fire truck we had been looking forward to seeing (i.e. there’s no room to sleep inside the Split, hence Andreas had purchased this Westy as more of a workhorse and overnight Camper than as a collector’s piece per se).

However, whenever Andreas buys a car he always does his research and is willing to drop whatever he’s doing to follow up a lead for the ‘right kind of car’. Andreas commented: “When I heard about a one-owner Westfalia that had just come up for sale I went to check it out and was pleased with what I found.”

Undiscovered gem

The Westy had clearly seen some use, but its owner had fitted covers to the seats and along with over mats front and rear, and that foresight had resulted in the interior looking practically untouched all these years later. There were some minor paintwork details to be addressed and the pop-top canvas was in need of a good clean but, all in all, this was an untouched and mostly original Westy.