Native Grounds
Volkswagen T1
by Luciano Vittori
On a mountain road in Bavaria, among timber chalets and snow-capped peaks, rolls the bus that taught the whole world to travel. The Volkswagen T1 — the *Bulli* — is at home where the Alps begin.
- TechniqueHahnemühle · Dibond
- Size100 × 75 cm
- EditionEdition of 24
- Price€995
An idea on wheels
The T1 was designed not by a studio but by a sketch. In 1947 the Dutch importer Ben Pon drew a simple oval with wheels beneath it in his notebook: a box on the running gear of the Beetle. Volkswagen built the idea, and in 1950 the first *Transporter* left the factory in Wolfsburg. Above the famous air-cooled boxer engine at the rear, everything was space.
What began as a delivery van became a way of life. The two-tone bus with its round face and large VW badge carried bakers and farmers, but also a generation who, curtains at the windows, set out to see the world. Of the first type — recognisable by its divided, two-piece windscreen, the *Splitscreen* — millions were built up to 1967; today the well-kept survivors are sought after and cherished.
Luciano Vittori sets the Bulli down where its heart beats: the Bavarian highlands, the air of pine and snow. The fresco treatment gives the bodywork the warmth of a memory — a bus that does not merely drive through a landscape, but has become part of it.
