We love that Penny is a Riviera—really—we do. When we bought her, we didn’t know a ton about Westys and Rivieras, just that the camper conversions were done by two different companies (Westfalia and Riviera respectively in case that’s not obvious) and we knew that Riviera tops pop straight up and Westys pop up at an angle.
The thing we did not at all anticipate is the near impossibility of finding replacement camper parts for Penny. One of the biggest differences between Westys and Rivieras is that VW contracted with Westfalia to build Westys, while Rivieras were shipped from the factory to distributors as standard (non-camper) busses/vans and the distributor contracted with Riviera to do the camper conversion.
This has caused the following complications.
1) Historically, I’ve found that a lot of the really solid information about VW history comes from the UK. I’ll bet that a lot would come from Germany too, but my ability to read the German language is impaired (okay, nonexistant). The point being that since Riviera conversions were done in the US, there isn’t much information coming from Europe on the subject.
2) Also, there isn’t much information in the US. I searched for info about Rivieras on Wikipedia. I realize that Wiki is not a reliable source of information, but this further reinforces my point. Even Wikipedia, where you can find information about EVERYTHING, only has this to say about Riviera.
“Riviera Motors was the Beaverton, Oregon based regional distributor of Volkswagens. Westfalia Campmobiles were selling too quickly for the distributorship to meet demand at the time, so beginning in 1965, Riviera Motors contracted with ASI (Automotive Services, Inc.), based in the Vancouver, Washington area, for Type 2 camper conversions. ASI/Riviera campers were converted to Westfalia-styled Campmobiles from panel and passenger vans during the split windscreen era, with conversions predominantly based on passenger van models after the 1968 introduction of the bay window Type 2. Production continued until sometime in the mid 1980's, with conversions built on the Vanagon (T25) platform after 1979.”
That is ALL that Wiki has on the subject!
3) There just aren’t that many Rivieras. This means that not that many people need parts, which means that no one has found it economically viable to produce replacement parts.
4) ASI has gone out of business. I did find a parts catalog that contained part numbers for all of the parts I need. It was from 1985.
I was able to find the following two very helpful links, but that's about it:
http://www.type2.com/library/camper.htm
http://www.rivieraregistry.com/history.php
All of this makes me very curious and also makes me think that I will be visiting the Beaverton and Vancouver public libraries in the future. Research project!
If you are reading this and would like to correct me on anything regarding this post, PLEASE do! I would love to be wrong about pretty much anything I’ve said above.
3 weeks ago
