24th blog – date: December, 5th 2025
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An interesting story unfolded in October 2020: In a forest in Lower Austria, a young metal detectorist discovered the wreckage of an early VW T1. He had actually been searching for old relics in the woods while his parents were mushroom hunting – but in an old crater at the end of a long-abandoned forest road lay these remains of a barndoor bus from the early 1950s.
The whole story, more photos including the recovery and a video, can be found in
⇒ this post ⇐.
But now back to our bus. In October, we received some much-needed help with the brake system renewal: new brake lines, brake pads, brake shoes, brake drums – the whole works.
Autumn was quite mild, so we were still tinkering outside even around Halloween.
These pictures of a barn find were taken around the same time. Together with a friend, I spontaneously bought this Steyr Baby – a 1939 model, a piece of Austrian automotive history that has always fascinated me, especially in this color combination.
The Steyr 55 (Steyr 50 or 55 – only around 13,000 were built between 1936 and 1940), often referred to as the „Volkswagen“ of Austria, features, as you can clearly see in the pictures, suicide doors and a large steel sunroof. The turn signals were retrofitted at some point, and the original indicator housings (below the A-pillar, next to the air vents) have unfortunately been filled with body filler.
If this car could talk, it would surely have countless stories to tell! Documents found inside show that the Steyr Baby was still on the road well into the 1970s. It even crossed the Brenner Pass in 1972, as a logbook confirms. And in the mid-1970s, already a true classic car at over 30 years old, the Steyr participated in a vintage car rally! It’s all the more impressive to think that even this was 50 years ago, and that both these records and the car itself have survived the test of time.
Since our bus is already quite busy, this Steyr Baby has found a new owner who will bring it back to life.
At the beginning of November 2020, we went to the nearest VW dealership full of anticipation, because the Volkswagen magazine, which had published an article about us, had finally been released! Of course, we picked up a few copies right there. Here are some photos from the article about the bus – with the bus and inside the bus.
You can read the full post ⇒ in this blog article ⇐ (german language) .
The next blog post will be about our visit to the ultimate vintage Volkswagen meet, the unique and spectacular gathering in Hessisch-Oldendorf in June 2021. Our bus wasn’t there, unfortunately, but I took loads of photos!
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