This VW Bus Helicopter Is Neither Of Those Things Anymore

The project involves completely custom body fabrication, paintwork, and a fun approach to design, and thankfully for everybody on the ground, there are no plans to ever make this wild machine fly for real.

The Brains Behind The Frankencopter
The inspired individual behind this so-called Frankencopter is Chuck Jurgen Teschke in Canada, who claims the project will become an installed art piece at a disc golf field, and not anything ever intended to fly in the sky, despite its fairly convincing appearance. This isn't Teschke's first Frankenstein helicopter project either, as his social media pages reveal multiple versions, some with tractor cabins attached to rotors and tails, others merging old trucks with airframes. But so far, the VW bus project looks the best and the most involved.

Teschke has been chronicling the project on his Instagram page since early October 2024, when it looks like he first drew up plans for the concept. A post on October 8th shows him claiming the project is a done deal with an image of an abandoned Volkswagen bus in a field, which must be one of the donor vehicles, and subsequent posts show that he must have already had the Airbus frame in his possession. One of the early working names for the combo VW-Airbus vehicle was the "Hippie Heli."

By January of this year, Teschke had successfully attached the tail and rear body frame of the Airbus helicopter to the front end of the VW bus, though there was clearly significant body work to be done to fill in the rest of the completed body and frame. Some posts joke about learning metal fabrication, so Teschke doesn't consider himself an expert by any means, but the nearly-completed work does speak for itself as a mark of both vision and quality.

Volkswagen Frankencopter Details
It looks like the Frankencopter keeps the front frame of the Volkswagen, including the windshield panels and fog lights, but Teschke cut out the headlight sections and installed lower visibility panels, as well as cutouts in the roof with glass, which you'd want for navigation if this thing actually ever flew. It's a nice design consideration and helps complete this as more than just a chop job, but truly something unique and realistic.

Further posts indicate that custom doors had to be fabricated and fitted, though they are designed to closely mimic the original bus's doors. The custom body fabrication widens the bus a bit, showing us what a potential widebody Volkswagen T1 could look like. The widening may be necessary to fit in an aircraft engine, but interior images show this project is hollowed out, guaranteeing it'll never fly. Some of Teschke's posts have hundreds of thousands of likes and views, so the project is popular and growing a following, even if that includes the "Ruined VWs" Facebook group, as well.