24 cars blue sky: Junkyard Find: 1978 Volkswagen Transporter

Like the Fiat 124 Sport Spider, your typical second-gen VW Transporter typically spends many years as a never-started project in a back yard or driveway (because everyone loves an air-cooled VW bus!), then washes ashore at a junkyard. I've been seeing these vans in about the same numbers in junkyards for a couple of decades now, even as only the nicest street-driven examples have been kept alive. Here's a '78 with some extremely Malaise-y custom touches that I spotted in a Colorado yard last week.
It's hard to imagine anything more 70s than a brown Transporter with hideous crypto-Native-American custom striping, also in shades of brown.
Like most junkyard VW vans, this one sat for many, many years before taking its final tow-truck ride.
The question here is: did the van's final owner store the engine inside, or was it placed there by a junkyard customer who pulled the engine and then decided not to buy it?
It's not especially rusty, by air-cooled VW standards (i.e., it's not a vaguely vehicle-shaped red stain on the pavement), but it's pretty much used up. Next stop: Crusher!