Berkeley Buslab: Where the Volkswagen Bus is King

Driving in South Berkeley, you may have noticed the array of Volkswagen buses parked at the intersection of Adeline Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way.

No, it isn’t a never-ending VW bus club meeting, but rather the new location of the , the only automotive shop in the East Bay that specializes in Volkswagen buses.

The idea for the Buslab originated 10 years ago, when co-owners Steve Perzan and Marco Greywe were both working for a Marin-based Volkswagen repair shop and noticed the inordinate amount of VW buses around.

So, Perzan and Greywe decided to open a shop that would specialize in maintaining VW buses in Berkeley.

Considering that Berkeley was at the forefront of the hippie era, what better place is there to open the quintessential hippy vehicle repair shop? Just about any Berkeley resident can testify that there are still a lot of Volkswagen Vanagon buses around town.

Different Vanagon models, produced between 1979 and 1992, come with different amenities, but each one has a back seat that folds into a bed — making them perfect for traveling.

With outdoorsy clientele at its front door, the Buslab was an instant success and swamped with work, said Perzan.

“We worked 12-hour days, seven days a week,” he said.

The need to expand to a larger facility was apparent immediately, Perzan said, but the Buslab was locked into 10-year lease on Blake Street.

That’s why, 10 years later, when the space on Adeline that previously housed Automotive Aces became available, Perzan and Greywe jumped on the opportunity to upgrade their shop.

The Buslab doubled its work capacity by going from three vehicle lifts to six lifts. And with nearly 4,000 square feet, there is ample room for the shop's five full-time mechanics to park the many vans belonging to clients, plus those from a collection that they pull parts from when needed.

Nowadays, the shop has many more walk-in customers because it has greater visibility, no longer tucked away on Blake, said Perzan.

Felipe De Calisto, a Berkeley resident for over twenty years and a mechanic at the Buslab since its first year in business, said the shop is a hub for Volkswagen bus owners because it’s the only place around that works primarily on Vanagons and other VW buses.

The Vanagon is more than a vehicle, according to Perzan; it's a way of life in that it embodies an outdoor-enthusiast mentality, prevalent here in Berkeley.

“It was always my dream to own a Vanagon repair shop,” said Perzan, who grew up in Brooklyn before moving westward to attend the University of Denver.

Just before completing his degree in restaurant management, he decided to tour the country after he graduated.

“I didn’t want to be 50 and the manager of a Chile's, so I bought a Volkswagen and traveled,” he said. “It sounded like more fun.”

Because Perzan couldn’t afford to pay a mechanic to work on his van, he taught himself how to work on Volkswagen buses and became an expert. His skill with the vans eventually landed him a job at the same shop in Marin where Greywe worked.

Greywe, a self-proclaimed “gear head,” grew up in Germany and got involved in restoring old German cars at a young age, he said.

Because they specialize in Volkswagen buses, the Buslab team has seen it all, said Greywe, enabling them to diagnose problems quickly and ultimately get vans back to their owners sooner than other shops might.

Beyond the standard maintenance required to keep 30-plus year old vehicles running, the Buslab can upgrade components to make the vans run better then ever, he said.

One such upgrade is a Subaru engine conversion: removing the notoriously underpowered original 90 horsepower VW engine and swapping it for a completely rebuilt 130 horsepower Subaru engine.

The price tag for such a conversion, which takes about two to three weeks, is around $10,000, said Greywe, but it completely modernizes the vehicle in reliability, power and fuel economy. “There is nothing on the road like it,” he said.

Lance Larson of Moraga, CA, had the Buslab put a Subaru engine and rebuilt transmission into his 1991 VW Syncro Vanagon Westfalia and spoke highly of the Buslab’s craftsmanship, especially Greywe’s expertise. “He’s super knowledgeable about these cars,” said Larson. “He’s a Volkswagen savant.”

Larson said the Buslab has always kept him and his family moving whenever they set out in their Vanagon on vacation.

“It’s the family escape pod,” he said. “You get out in it and the world slows down.”

For longtime Vanagon owner and Berkeley resident Frank Bliss, the Buslab is the only shop he will take his 1989 Volkswagen to for work. 

After 360,000 miles, the van still drives great, said Bliss. He had the Buslab do a full engine rebuild 210,000 miles ago.

“What’s unique to the Buslab is that they know these vehicles inside and out, because it’s all they work on, and I trust them implicitly,” said Bliss.