Originally posted by WPRESTO I had the very bad experience of borrowing and driving a dangerously under powered VW mini-van. It was literally a matter of flooring the accelerator then waiting for something to happen.
We had 1977 VW (bus) Station Wagon It zipped around quite handily.
I don't know what model would be called a VW "mini-van"; that term hadn't been invented then. Whatever vehicle it was, if you pressed on the accelerator and little or nothing happened, it was obviously in serious need of some kind of repair or maintenance. Maybe it needed something replaced in the fuel system. Or if it had a carburetor, perhaps the choke wasn't operating properly.
Our VW would fall below the speed limit on very long, steep hills, because one would need to downshift. Still it had plenty of power in the correct gear for the task. For a couple of years, on vacations, we pulled a Boler travel trailer with it, had a canoe on top, and with the interior stuffed to the gills, we could still hit the speed limit (with it floored). It was kind of like having cruise control, an option not available. Nonetheless, we still got 20mpg or better when traveling with that load, which was excellent gas mileage for the time. We had very aggressive traction tread tires on it, and it never got stuck in snow. The interior heat in winter was terrible, of course, with the air-cooled engine. We had to finally get a gasoline heater put in it, but routed it's output into the vehicle's heat & defroster vents, instead of just into the cabin as was usually done. That lowered the mileage a tad in winter. After some more years, it had a lot of trouble with rust, and then started burning oil. But it was great fun those first several years. It never had that no-go problem when the accelerator was pressed.