NAPA, Calif. — For old car guys there’s always a story to tell. Napa’s Kimber “Van” Van Oeveren has a few — nearly all focused on Volkswagens — and he’s glad to share them.
He and his wife, Candy Jean, have been members of the Napa-based VW club, North Bay Air Cooled, since its beginning in July 2013. In fact, he was standing next to the club’s co-founders, Alex Weeks and Don Haugen Jr., when the two decided on the club’s name, when and where it would meet, and other details.
Weeks, who lives across the street from the Van Oeverens, picks up the story of the club’s founding.
“I had just gotten my first Volkswagen, a 1971 bus, a few months before, and Don was always telling me about all the car clubs that had come and gone out of Napa,” he said. “We spent a lot of time driving around looking for abandoned Vdubs (VWs), or what we thought were abandoned Vdubs, to see if we could buy them and restore them.”
The two constantly talked about the need for a VW club, Weeks said, and one night, after a few beers, he told Haugen, “We’re gonna do it.”
They posted a listing on the classic VW forum, The Samba, stating that the club would meet at 5 p.m. on the first Saturday of July in the parking lot behind In & Out Burger on Imola and Soscol avenues.
“We had about 15 cars show up at that time,” Weeks said, “and it’s been 10 years since then.”
The club continues to meet every first Saturday of the month at the same time in the same parking lot. Current NBAC co-presidents Kerri Schillinger and Nikki Carpenter have announced an outdoor potluck barbecue to celebrate the anniversary. It will begin at 4:30 p.m., Saturday, Aug. 5, at Vine Hill Park in Napa.
On the club’s Facebook page Carpenter writes, “The last 10 years have provided us with many amazing memories and wonderful VW friends. Thank you to all of the NBAC members throughout the last 10 years that have come to the meet-ups, come to our shows and other special events, or even just followed us on Facebook. It is all of our amazing club members that make this group so special.” Additionally, she thanks both Weeks and Haugen “for having the vision and starting this incredible club. We would also like to recognize our most die-hard member, Kimber ‘Van’ Van Oeveren, who has attended the most meet-ups to date.”
The club’s good people
The co-founders thought the club would last for a few months and then fizzle out. But it never did. How come?
“I really don’t know,” Weeks responded. “If I had to answer the question, it’s good people. Members have come and gone over the years; there are a lot of people in the Napa Valley who are classic Vdub people. They have them, restore them, maybe they just drive them and have other people work on them. But (10 years ago) they really didn’t know each other. That’s what Don and I were trying to do, to get people connected. I think we did our job.”
Van Oeveren said Weeks did everything for the new club, including all the computer work, designing the logo to use on printed T-shirts and getting all the stickers made.
Weeks was president for the first eight years before he stepped down.
“I had a lot of good people helping me, like Kerri (Schillinger) and Van’s daughter, Nikki (Carpenter), he said. “They were all helping and had a vision for what the club should be. We became a nonprofit and started doing a car show for the Boys & Girls Club in Vacaville. It just became a lot bigger.”
He realized the two women were doing all the work, adding that after eight years, “It was time for me to step back and let them take over.”
During that time Weeks sold his ’71 bay-window bus and bought a ’64 split-window bus and restored it, which took a few years.
“I sat on it a while and I had to save up some money,” he said. “A good friend of mine, Brian, did the body work and painting.”
The bus currently sits covered in the driveway.
“It’s a work in progress,” Weeks said. “I still have a couple of minor things to fix, but every five-minute job turns into two hours, and I’ve kind of hit the point where I want a break. I’ve got other passions in life.”
Those passions include being a musician who has a local band, Through the Haze. They have performed all around the Napa area, including at Napa’s Porchfest and at the Blue Note during locals’ night. Weeks turned his garage into a recording studio (which is why the bus sits outside) and says music is taking up more of his time.
Still, he would love to get out in the bus, “because it’s summertime and I wish I was cruising.”
Two 1971 bay-window buses
At the Van Oeverens’ Napa home are two 1971 VW bay-window buses parked in the driveway and two early 1960s Beetles parked on the street. Candy Jean owns one of the Beetles and uses the red-and-white bay-window bus in her business, which is selling handmade jewelry at the Napa Farmers’ Market on Tuesdays.
Van was born in Cleveland in 1950, and 12 years later his father was transferred to the San Francisco Bay Area.
“He had been coming out here for business trips in 1961 and told us we’re moving to San Rafael,” he said. His father also bought a new 1961 red Volkswagen Beetle, and when Van turned 16 that’s the car he drove to take his driver’s test.
“It was the first Volkswagen I ever drove,” he said.
His first car came a few months later. He had left home and was living at a volunteer fire department.
“I was dating this girl, and I was going over to her house and borrowing her dad’s car to go out on a date,” Van said. “One day he said he’s got a ’56 Volkswagen in the backyard.” Its engine was in a box in the garage, and the owner told Van, “If you tow it out of here, you can have it. And I’ll come over and we can put the engine together and put it in.”
Van towed it from a backyard in Tiburon to a vacant lot next to the fire station. At the time, he was attending high school, volunteering at the fire department and working at Tijuana Taco, making a dollar an hour.
One Saturday morning his girlfriend’s father showed up at the fire department with the VW engine in a box.
“It was a 36-horsepower engine, which is basically the same engine we’re using today,” he said. “It’s smaller, but it’s still air-cooled.”
The two put the engine together and the car ran fine, but two weeks later the girlfriend broke up with Van, who took the’56 VW back to her father.
“He said, ‘I don’t want it. It is out of my backyard. You keep it.’”
Van drove the car for years and sold it to a fireman who paid $400 for it. Van went to Lagunitas and found another ’56 VW for sale and paid $200 for it. He bought a newer wrecked VW bug with leather fold-back seats and a synchronized transmission, which he put into the ’56 beetle. He sold that one and after getting out of the Navy bought a ’68 VW camper that he lived in while attending college on the GI Bill.
There were other cars in his life, but he has always come back to VWs. His favorite is a 1971 VW bus that started its life green and white but now is burgundy and black with black bumpers. This is the vehicle he drives to NBAC meetings.
NBAC co-presidents
Schillinger, who attended the group’s second gathering, and Carpenter have been NBAC co-presidents for the past two years. Again, it’s a bit of a story. She was living in Southern California when organizers posted the meet-up on the Samba website. Schillinger and her husband, Steve, were dating at the time, and she was planning to visit him Travis Air Force Base, where he was serving.
“He told me there was another meet-up happening, and we drove out there in a Jetta and met up with everyone at a restaurant that is no longer there,” Schillinger said. Steve and Kerri were instant friends with the whole group.
“A lot of the people who were there at the beginning are still there and have been going ever since,” she said. “We meet up every single month, except during COVID and one time it was raining way too hard for any of us to get into our old VWs. Other than that, it’s been like clockwork, meeting up at the same place every single month.”
Beyond those who meet in person, there’s a Facebook group that posts VW photos and bits of information quite often.
“We’ve got a lot of members on Facebook — 826 on a recent July day — many of whom have never made it out to a meet-up but like to be active on Facebook,” Schillinger said.
Her preferred VW to attend group meetings?
“When it’s not in need of work, which unfortunately it is now, I bring my ’69 Squareback, which I bought in 2008,” she said. Currently the car needs to have its steering column replaced, but “unfortunately most people don’t like to work on Squarebacks because they’re very, very different and the dashboard is very difficult to deal with. I have the parts and I’m just trying to find someone who will take care of it for me. Part of the problem of getting it fixed is that the car can’t be driven as it is, so it’s a long tow to any shop.
Between the two of them, the Schillingers have 10 VWs, and five are running, although only four can be driven. Currently they are restoring a 1961 single-cab truck that needs a new engine, transmission, new brakes, new brake lines and new hoses. Schillinger said although the single-cab is old, there’s not much rust.
The single-cab is basically a bus with the passenger compartment chopped off to make a pickup truck. Schillinger estimates it will be on the road within a couple of months.
“Steve works on it when he can, but because we’ve had to buy so much for it, because it needed everything new, we do it in steps,” she said. “We can’t afford to pay for everything at once.”
Weeks was asked why Volkswagens?
“You know, I wasn’t a car guy growing up,” he said. “It wasn’t until 2012 that I got my first Volkswagen. I had gone camping with Don (Haugen) and his wife — he had his bus out there all tricked out for camping. I thought, this is really cool. You know, being able to drive it around, stop anywhere you want to, pull out the bed, camp for the night and get back on the road the next day. I think I’d like to give that a shot. You get into it and you get sucked in. It’s like the mob; once you’re in, you can’t get out.”
Dave Stoneberg is a journalist who worked for the St. Helena Star from 2006 to 2020. He and his wife own and have restored a 1971 VW bay-window bus named “Bubba the Blue Bus.” It’s a work in progress.