Top of the World – well almost!

I thought I’d share with you some of my happy snaps from a recent trip to Alaska and Canada. I’m pleased to report that Volkswagen is alive and well in both these places, although surprisingly more noticeable in Alaska than Canada. In Vancouver, almost every VW I saw was new: brand new Golfs, the majority of which were 2-door models, plenty of New Beetles, and a considerable amount of Jetta’s. These I have not seen since my days in England, and certainly I have never seen new models like these – I guess they’re the alternative to the Bora up there?

Travelling through the hinterland, I did come across half a dozen old Kombi’s of say 1970’s era, however most were the 1980’s squarer looking models and not particularly well looked after.  I would say though, in downtown Vancouver, 1 in every 5 vehicles, which passed me by, was a Volkswagen, which was quite pleasing to see. .

What I found though, was a distinct lack of older Beetles and I can recall seeing only 3 or so in the two weeks I spent around Canada.

And hey…they’ve got Scirocco’s here too! Although some of them like this heavily laden dark blue model were hanging together by a thread! I did start to form an opinion whilst on my travels, that Canadians could possibly try a little harder to keep the legend alive, but I was limited to the western provinces and the story may well be different in Toronto and Quebec.

Onward we travelled up into Alaska, the temperature dropping around 2 degrees every day. The curious thing about most of the towns we visited is that they are locked in by water and have no road access. But that does not stop them from having more vehicles than people! And as for VW’s? Well definitely more interest than their Canadian neighbours! In no less than 2 hours, I’d seen around 8 (old) Beetles in one town, of varying standards, and a few older Kombi’s for good measure.  In fact, the newer Golfs and Jetta’s seemed not to have made it north of the border in such numbers.

And in the delightfully named town of Skagway, I stumbled upon this blue convertible buggy!  Now why the hell would anyone want one of these in Alaska? But that’s not all…turning the corner I saw an identical one in a parking lot, and later in the afternoon saw a third one being towed by one of those huge Yankee recreational vehicles. I guess someone has the mould for them up there? And again in Skagway, tucked away in a field behind the main street, just for the Audi lovers, a very well maintained early 1980s Audi 100.

Prior to my trip, I had taken the liberty of contacting 2 members of the Alaskan Arctic AirCooled VW Club (now that’s a Club name for you!) in the hope that we could have met up. Unfortunately, most their clubs members are based up in Anchorage and several hours drive from where I was visiting. Nevertheless, I shall hopefully be staying in touch with them and I would recommend you visit their website at www.arcticaircooledvws.com - you will be pleased to see that Alaskans are just as serious about their VW’s as we are! Hope you enjoy these photos from my travels anyway.

Martin Fox