THE KOMBI KONNECTION

Brookie · Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 7:53 pm Post subject: Darcy the Poptop Camper

Forgotten I had written this

Darcy the 1974 VW Sopru Poptop Camper

DARCY 1974 VOLKSWAGEN POPTOP CAMPER.

We first met Darcy in the early 90s when we advertised a car for sale and one enquiry was from a guy in Wagin about 200 k away who was interested. Our car was a Mercedes Benz 280 compact, 1971, with a 280 twin cam engine and was rather rare as only 53 were bought into Australia. (We have just bought a 1972 version.) We were only selling as we had two other cars and had only done 1200 k in the MB in previous twelve months.

As we had no success with other enquiries, as they did not want to drive 100K into country, we said we would consider his proposition that we trade his VW camper.
It was arranged that we would meet at Brookton which was midway. We met , test drove and did a deal. There was a lot of documentation with Darcy (who had no name at this time) and the seller told us his history with the camper.
He had bought it in late 80s to travel around Australia with his wife after retirement which they did covering 19,000ks.
They went across middle of WA to Alice Springs then up to Darwin and across far north Queensland to the gulf and then down East Coast to Victoria and back through South Australia to Perth. You can see brake service sticker on RH drivers door post from brake service in Townsville on 2/1/1992 at 106,000.
It was then only used once or twice a week to drive 2 k each way into town for shopping. Driving home we were a little disappointed with performance. When we checked at home we found accelerator was only opening carbs about 50%. The difference was amazing.

On checking the log books and note books and accounts that came with it we found that it was originally delivered by Volkswagen in Melbourne as a fully fitted camper converted by Sopru in South Australia and was the Cruiser model which was the upmarket version.
It was used only as a camper by the owners who after few years moved to Western Australia. The notebooks showed holidays mainly in Victoria.
It was then sold to next owner who used it as camper only in WA and one trip across Nullabor to South Australia. It appeared by 1990 or so it had done less than 100,000ks.

The next owner from these records was our friend from Wagin.
When we bought it the speedo was showing around 138,000 and from the records appeared genuine.
It drove well and everywhere we went we were complimented on condition.
We had it serviced regularly by Volkers in Rockingham though due to distance had occasional work done in Perth.
As you can see on website http://darcydakdakvw.8k.com we used Darcy quite extensively touring in WA. I was only working part time due to illness so we “relaxed” this way.
In 1997 we decided to go 4WD again and sold Darcy!!! Big mistake.
At the time we advertised it as the best VW camper in WA and it sold quickly to a nice family in Fremantle.
They used it as family camper and daily driver as the husband worked in Kwinana. We saw it occasionally over the next few years and it always looked well kept.

The website shows our reasons for buying a VW again and our attempt to find Darcy and as our purchaser had moved we could not locate him.
However we found him again and he had been used by a German backpacker.
Unfortunately the logbooks, notebooks of his journeys were all missing which was disappointing as we had handed them all on including our records to our purchaser.
We took him to Volker and said fix him. He did. See Invoices.

Since Darcy has been refurbished we have been to Geraldton and other areas in mid west and it was really great to have him back to top condition.
We are sure the next owner of Darcy will have as much enjoyment as we have had and Darcy will enjoy being used properly again.

Warren & Margaret Matthews
20th. January 2004-01-19
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Kombis Keep you Younger

73 Sopru Poptop-under resto

Diddlie · Posted: Tue Apr 08, 2008 8:24 pm Post subject:

What a nice story, you have been so lucky having such great kombis