By A.J. Baime | Photographs by Morgan Lieberman for WSJ

Robert "Bob" Skinner, 58, and his wife, Marlo Skinner, 57, owners of the Vacaville Auto Body Center and Skinner Classics, a restoration shop specializing in Volkswagen buses, in Vacaville, Calif., on their "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" 1967 Volkswagen bus, as told to A.J. Baime.

Robert: In 1982, the movie "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" came out. I was fascinated with the Volkswagen bus in that movie. A year later, I found a VW bus for sale for $800 in Alameda, Calif. I had $500. The owner let me make up the difference working in his yard, and I drove that bus away.

Marlo: We went on our first date in that bus. Bob still has it. It's a 1966, from the year he was born. Bob's passion became my passion, and it's been a huge part of our lives for 33 years. We started our business in 1994 and have had hundreds of buses go through our shop.

Robert: In December 2014, a friend was visiting Los Angeles. His cousin knew of this VW sitting behind a fence at a nearby shop. My buddy looked over the fence, snapped pictures, and sent them to me with a note: "This looks like the 'Fast Times' bus." The next day, he called the shop, and then he called me. "You won't believe it," he said. "It is the 'Fast Times' bus! And it's for sale." I called the seller and he told me where to get all the info, the history and everything. I did my research and validated what he said.

Marlo: We were on vacation at the time, and the seller told us that there were two potential buyers fighting over the bus. Bob's anxiety level was so high. He made an offer, but we were $40,000 short. We ended up leaving our vacation, getting our truck and trailer, and driving to L.A.

Robert: We communicated with the seller on the way. I told him, "Look, I don't have an extra $40,000. But I promise you we will be the greatest caretakers of this bus. If you sell it to us, we will share it with the world."

Marlo: It was intense! Because, for 30 years, Bob and his friends talked about this bus. Whatever happened to it? The story is, after the movie came out, it went back home like a regular vehicle. It belonged to a guy in southern California, and his daughter drove it to high school for four years. It was her daily driver. Years later, it went up for sale, which is when we found it.

Robert: We were still driving to L.A. when the seller told me he would let us buy the bus. It was literally a dream come true. When we got it back to our shop, we wanted it to be a mystery. We put a cover over it. When we closed business at 5 p.m. each day, I would lock the doors and windows so no one could see in, and we would work on it. We did the regular stuff to make it a driver. I was able to get pictures from Universal Studios.

Marlo: We did preservation work, not restoration. We did replica work to make it look like how it did in the movie. I handmade five sets of curtains until I got them perfect. We hung the beads. We got the beanbag, the fur, the disco ball.

Robert: When we did the big reveal at our shop in 2016, we did a recreation of the famous "stoner" scene where the doors open and the characters fall out. We had our son, Dillon, who has long blond hair, play [Sean Penn's character] Jeff Spicoli, and we got a smoke machine. There were hundreds of people there.

Marlo: Our first car show debut was in southern California, and we contacted the woman who had driven this bus to high school for four years. When she saw it, she broke down and was so emotional. Now we take the bus to specialty car shows. We have done events with Volkswagen. We keep the bus at the Valley Relics Museum, near where the movie was filmed. We once had the bus at an event with Robert Romanus, who played Mike Damone in the movie, and he signed the dashboard. We have so many stories, it's crazy.

Robert: We kept our promise when we bought this bus, that we would share it with the world.

Write to A.J. Baime at myride@wsj.com.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 02, 2025 08:00 ET (13:00 GMT)

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