GoWesty started life as Ziggy’s Garage. What?

That’s right, Ziggy’s Garage! I was eighteen years old in my second year at Cal Poly and, although not a math major, I ran the numbers and figured out early on that there was no way possible to make it through all six years of a four-year Cal Poly engineering program on student loans alone. Sure, my family was willing to help, but “family money” was an unfamiliar term in the Valdes household. So, the day I got my first student loan (a blistering $2500 that was supposed to last all year) I blew the whole thing on parts to build an air compressor, a roll-around tool box, and materials to fabricate some simple work benches in the garage of a rented house. With that, along with some tools left over from my high school “mobile mechanic” days, my first company Ziggy’s Garage was born.

Four years and two more student-loans-spent-on-tools later, I graduated from Cal Poly SLO with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and was off to my home ground, the San Francisco Bay Area, with a brand spank’n new diploma and in search of riches. Eight years later, married to Kathy, and now with two kids, Lucas Jr. and Clara, a Professional Engineering license, and all student loans paid back in full...it was back to the beautiful central coast in search for a better life for our young family. Live in the Bay Area? What the heck was I thinking! My dad Rene was horrified. Imagine the look on his face when I told him of my plans to give up my engineering career, “to do what?” So there I was, on my back in a one-bay shop, working on, you guessed it, Volkswagens and Porsches. You can take the engineer out of the grease pile, but you can’t take the grease monkey out of the engineer! My dad predicted doom and regret. Today, he and I are both glad he was wrong….

A couple years later, around 1994, good fortune came to our young family. For one thing, we found a bit larger house to rent here in Los Osos, just big enough to include the piano uncle Rey gave to Clara on her birthday (not just any birthday, but her actual birthday). Anyway, with the help of a friend, I loaded the piano onto a small trailer and headed for the new house. On the way I wondered how the heck just the two of us were going to get that piano off the trailer and up all those stairs… As we turned the corner onto the street the house is on, there they were: Taylor, Greg, and Trampas playing Hacky Sack in front of the house they were sharing as roommates, right across the street from our new place. They all turned out to be gear heads just like me! What luck! They all helped move the piano, and that was just beginning long and fruitful relationships. Greg, Tramp, and Taylor are all still here working with me, albeit after each came and went several times, getting degrees and/or married and/or lost in places as far away as India, New Zealand, and Pozo.  We worked together on and off for several years under the name of my second company, PE Products, restoring vintage Volkswagens and Porsches, and making seat belt kits for those and other vintage vehicles. Around 1999 I got a call from Gary Smyth, who was operating a tiny on-line parts company out of his garage he called GoWesty Camper Products. He was interested in our approach to the problem of finding the right tires for Westy’s, and our approach to solving a host of other problems related to these vehicles. One thing led to another, and before you know it, we were doing all of his new product development, warehousing, shipping and receiving. And, here we are today. Over thirty of us are now living, breathing and loving these unique vehicles, in this most unique of places, on the beautiful central coast, Los Osos, California . Not Pismo Beach , but still all the clams you can eat!

And here we are, indeed…

Our mission: 68-03 Volkswagen Buses, Vanagons, and Eurovans. Bumper to bumper. Parts, service, and sales by folks who own them, drive them and love them. You can tell that it's true anytime you call GoWesty! There are lots of places selling parts, service and/or vehicles. The difference at GoWesty is that we have all CHOSEN to do so. We are here because we WANT TO be here. Give us a call. You’ll see...