Vintage Van Adventures owner Joe Mitchell stands in his business’s warehouse at 300 Waldoboro Road in Bremen. Mitchell, who moved to the area about a year ago, has been operating the parts and rental business since 2023. The business features Volkswagen Westfalia vans, which have not been made in the United States since 1990. (Piper Pavelich photo)
As winter turns to spring, Bremen residents may notice a fleet of vintage Volkswagen Westfalia buses on the road heading in and out of town.
Joe Mitchell, who moved to Bremen about a year ago, is getting Vintage Van Adventures, his van rental and parts business, up and running just in time for summer about 25 years after his entrance into the automotive industry.
Through the business, customers can choose to rent one of four Volkswagen Westfalia vans, all named after types of flowers: Goldie, L’Slipper, Lupine, and Lilee. The four vans were manufactured in 1985, 1985, 1988, and 1990, respectively.
Volkswagen Westfalia vans were popular amongst campers for their pop-top design, which allowed for sleeping and living areas. The series was mainly manufactured in Germany from the early 1950s until the early 2000s. The U.S. stopped producing the series in the 1990s.
The vans are equipped with anything a renter may need, said Mitchell, with the expectation they bring their own groceries and toiletries.
“Helping other people find joy in this is where the true value is for me,” Mitchell said.
Additionally, the business sells recycled Volkswagen Westfalia parts.
Although Volkswagen vans take up most of his days now, Mitchell said his passion for this specific automobile came later in life. Hailing from New Hampshire, Mitchell grew up surrounded by mechanics on his father’s side of the family. Throughout his childhood and into his college days, Mitchell said he could be found tinkering with cars and bikes.
“I like to take old broken things and make them new again, that’s my thing,” he said.
Attending the University of Colorado, Mitchell was on the school’s biking team but quickly found he needed a mode of transportation to accommodate his hobby. In 1999, he laid his eyes on his first Volkswagen Westfalia van. He went in on a $200 purchase with two friends, and the rest might as well have been history.
“I found out right away why I got it for $200, but I did it because of the confidence that I could fix it, and that’s something that’s really interesting about this craft, is that it allows you to take stuff that people just normally throw away and get tremendous value out of it,” he said.
Mitchell credited the van he purchased with setting him on the path that brought him to where he is today. But, the last 25 years haven’t been easy, he said. Shortly after purchasing the van, Mitchell was in search of a part when he met Jim McCann, the owner of Busted Bus, a mail-order business selling recycled Volkswagen, Audi, and Porsche parts.
Mitchell said he offered his help to get the business online after McCann voiced his struggle with selling parts. Soon after extending that offer, Mitchell found himself working alongside McCann.
“We did this handshake deal for like $10,000. I’d pay $500 a month for parts and then $500 a month to rent space from him and he would teach me everything I wanted to know about running that business,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about buses. I had just bought one. I didn’t know anything about Volkswagens … And it was really Jim McCann who got me started and taught me about them.”
Mitchell went on to take ownership of Busted Bus in 1999 and run the business part time through the rest of his college days.
Once he graduated with a degree in engineering, however, Mitchell said he felt he had to make sure his degree didn’t go to waste. He sold Busted Bus in 2003, took the business back in 2004 due to unforeseen circumstances with the then-owner, and sold it again in 2006.
After selling it for the second and last time, Mitchell went on to spend the next 17 years as an engineer.
“When I went to university, I excelled,” he said. “So, that skill of figuring things out, that analytical thinking, that type of career was appealing to me because I was going to solve problems, and I was going to do it on a level that was sort of larger than a vehicle or something.”
Even though his career brought him professional success, he said, it did not bring him the personal success he hoped to feel. Busted Bus and the opportunity it could have brought him was always “the one that got away,” he said.
Three Volkswagen Westfalia camper vans sit in the Vintage Van Adventures warehouse at 300 Waldoboro Road in Bremen. Each van, which is named after a type of flower, can be driven up to 1,500 miles round-trip by a renter, sleeps four guests, and costs $279 per night. (Piper Pavelich photo)
In 2022, Mitchell was working on selling a Volkswagen bus he had acquired in Colorado when he met Paul Wood, who owns property in Bremen and is an investor in Vintage Van Adventures. Mitchell said he and Wood quickly found they had many shared interests, the most obvious being Volkswagen vans.
“We’re both super passionate about this. The more he learned about me and the more I learned about him, the more we just kind of clicked,” Mitchell said. “All of this is because of him.”
The pair wasted no time brainstorming the things they could accomplish together, including building a fleet of Volkswagen Westfalia vans in hopes of converting them to electric vehicles.
Only a few weeks later, the then-owner of Busted Bus was looking to sell the business and Mitchell said it felt like the stars aligned for him. Because of this development, he and Wood put the electric vehicle conversion project on hold.
Then, Mitchell and Wood acquired Vintage Van Adventures, a rental van business established in Brunswick in 2017. Mitchell said he met the owner, Bob Muller, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Muller was selling off his vehicles due to a stark decrease in business.
“All of these ideas that were in their like little infant stage that were just ideas have come together. It’s all here,” he said. “Life happens. One thing leads to another.”
With Wood’s desire to invest locally and Mitchell’s need for more space for the business, Wood purchased the warehouse at 300 Waldoboro Road in Bremen in 2024 and Mitchell started moving to the Midcoast as soon as he could.
“Everything in here, I moved here myself,” Mitchell said, referring to the equipment and shelving in the Bremen warehouse. “It’s definitely a move the business couldn’t have done without Paul (Wood) … Otherwise, it would’ve crushed me.”
Now, Vintage Van Adventures is a recycled parts and rental van business based in Bremen, a culmination of Busted Bus and the original Vintage Van Adventures.
“There’s no place I’d rather be,” Mitchell said. “I don’t want to take a vacation. This is my vacation, right here. It’s kind of crazy, but it’s true.”
Mitchell said manifestation was a key part of his journey, noting that “if you can see it in your mind, you can hold it in your hands.” He said he wanted to believe everything would work out and that the business he earned 25 years ago would come back into his life.
“I have a video from 2020 of me driving and talking about this, getting this back, and how I would do it,” he said. “It called to me, or it was always there waiting for me, and I didn’t have to really try hard to get it back, it just came back to me naturally, and now the hard work is here … Quite often, my prayers now are for the strength to do with the gifts that I’ve been given.”
Vintage Van Adventures is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 300 Waldoboro Road in Bremen.
For more information, call 529-4404, email info@vintagevanadventures.com, go to vintagevanadventures.com, or find Vintage Van Adventures on Facebook.
