Without Woodstock, There’d Be No ID.Buzz

The Volkswagen ID.Buzz might come from Germany, but it may not exist if not for what happened in Bethel, New York over half a century ago.

This small Catskills town was once home to Max Yasgur’s dairy farm, the site of the legendary Woodstock festival in 1969. VW’s new ID.Buzz is quite obviously a tribute to the original “Hippie” bus, so it only made sense to journey to Yasgur’s farm, if not to join a rock ‘n roll band—or get back to the land—but to better understand this car.

Volkswagen spent the better part of the 21st century teasing a Microbus revival, but dieselgate got it to actually commit to making one. The fallout of its diesel-emissions cheating scandal meant VW needed two things, EVs and goodwill; the ID.Buzz would provide both, leaning on the hippie movement to play into people’s nostalgia. Remind people that VW was once associated with something remembered fondly, not just dirty diesels.

The hippies and the wider counterculture embraced the original Microbus. “For many people, the VW Microbus became the symbol of protest with Detroit’s overpowered cars and society in general,” Smithsonian curator Roger White said in the museum’s magazine. “It was a way of thumbing their noses at the establishment.”

Along with peace signs, pot leaves, tie-dye, doves, and VW’s own Beetle, the Microbus became one of the lasting symbols of the hippie movement. Woodstock was the movement’s apogee. Attendance was about half a million strong, according to a famous estimate, and those there got to hear some of the biggest acts of the day. A 1970 documentary and many albums helped cement its place in history.

Photo by: DW Burnett / Motor1

Photo by: DW Burnett / Motor1

Photo by: DW Burnett / Motor1

Frankly, it’s easy to be cynical about all this. A large multinational corporation with its tail between its legs co-opting an idealistic movement whose aesthetics endured but was largely a failure. And Woodstock’s reputation was tarnished by the disastrous ‘94 and ‘99 festivals, and the failed attempt at a 2019 redux for the 50th anniversary.

It’s possible that my reading Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem the night before might’ve informed my cynicism. In the 1967 Saturday Evening Post essay, Didion paints the hippies hanging out in San Francisco as burnouts, flunkies. Drug-addled children who in turn gave birth to drug-addled children. 

My cynicism didn’t hold.

Photo by: DW Burnett / Motor1

Photo by: DW Burnett / Motor1

Photo by: DW Burnett / Motor1

Photographer Dave Burnett and I met at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, a concert amphitheater built on what was Yasgur’s farm. There’s a monument on the grounds overlooking the grass hill where the stage was built. On this cold February day, the field is covered in snow, and someone’s drawn a peace sign on the hill.

If you love music as much as I do, you can’t help but take a moment to stop here. Down at the bottom of that hill right there, which otherwise looks like any other out in this part of the world, Hendrix blew everyone’s minds with a white Strat and a wall of Marshalls. What happened here matters. And, maybe nostalgia isn’t such a bad thing.

Photo by: DW Burnett / Motor1

Pros: Looks like nothing else on the road, surprisingly quick, good DC fast charging.

It takes a pretty cold bastard not to be charmed by the ID.Buzz. Yes, this is VW’s attempt to atone for a very serious sin, but man if it isn’t damn good looking. The proportions are unlike anything else on the road, and you really have to see it out and about to appreciate it. The huge slab sides, cab pushed far forward like the rear-engine inspiration, friendly grille-less face, and of course, two-tone paintwork really work. My only criticism is that the silver in this particular two-tone scheme—it should be white. 

A Chrysler Pacifica is longer overall, but the ID.Buzz is much taller, and with no engine taking up front space, there’s just so much more bodywork and glass. That size translates to real practicality, too. This van seats seven comfortably, and if you opt to fold the third row down, there’s a lot of cargo space. It’s a legitimate option for big families. 

Given the $61,545 base price and the $66,040 as-tested price of this Pro S Plus single-engine model, the interior is a bit spartan compared with the top end of the minivan market. It’s also surprisingly functional given the whimsical exterior. But, massaging seats are an unexpected yet welcome inclusion.

VW improved its infotainment system a good deal, but there are certain functions—like searching for charging stations in the in-built navigation—that are slightly baffling to use. And if you inevitably spend too much time fiddling with the touchscreen, it’ll tell you to refocus your attention on the road and lock out the screen temporarily.

Photo by: DW Burnett / Motor1

Cons: Choppy ride, build-quality issues, confusing infotainment.

There are other annoyances and quality problems. Like no dedicated rear-window switches. If you want to operate the rear sliding windows from the driver’s seat, you have to first press a haptic pad that just says REAR. And then when you try to close the windows, they’ll keep reopening themselves. You have to pull up on the switch 2-3 times before they properly shut.

The haptic steering wheel controls aren’t so bad once you get used to them, but the aural feedback they’re supposed to provide randomly turned off a couple times. Most worryingly, the driver door partially unlatched itself while I was on the highway. No idea why, and it’s never happened to me in any other car before.

Woodstock is worn into the fabric of Bethel Woods, even 56 years after the festival. We find a roadside Beetle made out of wood painted with all kinds of hippie iconography, a couple of head shops, and some beautifully painted doves that were placed throughout the county to mark the festival’s 50th anniversary.

Photo by: DW Burnett / Motor1

Photo by: DW Burnett / Motor1

Photo by: DW Burnett / Motor1

Photo by: DW Burnett / Motor1

We didn’t see a ton of people out and about—it was very cold—but the folks we do encounter seem to like the Buzz. It’s a happy car in a sea of boring, drab crossovers, and apocalypse-portending Cybertrucks. It has an effect on those around it, though sometimes it’s nothing more than just bemusement.

As a thing to drive… it’s fine. This single-motor variant weighs damn near 6,000 pounds, and it feels it. The suspension never really settles down while trying to keep that weight in check and provide some measure of handling ability. But, it’s not a bad cruiser otherwise, and with 282 horsepower and 413 pound-feet of torque from its single rear motor, it’s genuinely quick. And the handling’s not too bad either. 

Our efficiency figures in cold weather and over many, many highway miles in and out of the Catskill Mountains were predictably not amazing, hovering around 2.0 to 2.2 miles per kilowatt-hour So on a full charge, it was difficult to get the 234-mile EPA range out of the 91.0-kilowatt-hour (86.0-kWh usable) battery, but again, it was very cold.

On the flipside, the ID.Buzz fast charges surprisingly well, as our colleagues at InsideEVs explored more in depth. On Electrify America’s ultra-fast chargers, we regularly saw charging rates at up to 200 kilowatts.

Photo by: DW Burnett / Motor1

With hindsight, a lot of the hippie movement looks silly. The characters in Slouching Towards Bethlehem sound like, well, a bit of a drag, and the counterculture of the 1960s gave way to the malaise of the 1970s. But the movement also did give us a lot of good, not least of which was the music. For every Incredible String Band on the lineup for Woodstock, there was a Joan Baez or The Band. (Apologies to fans of the Incredible String Band.)

The ID.Buzz is a flawed vehicle, and its existence is largely thanks to VW’s unconscionable emissions cheating. But it is delightful. 

I probably didn’t need to go to Bethel to make this determination, but in a lot of ways, this is a spiritual home for the ID.Buzz. The weight of its history makes it a little harder to be cynical, and is that such a bad thing? Woodstock promised three days of peace, and music. Doesn’t that sound pretty good right about now?

At one of the shops in town, I bought a small sticker of the Woodstock poster. It looked just right on the rear window of the Buzz. I think that’s a mission accomplished for VW. 

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DW Burnett / Motor1