The Volkswagen California is a campervan based on the mid-sized Transporter panel van, developed by Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles (VWCV) and sold since 2003. It is the first campervan designed and built in-house by VWCV Special Business Unit, a subsidiary of Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles.
Previously, Volkswagen offered the Volkswagen Westfalia Camper manufactured by Westfalia; the chassis were manufactured for Westfalia exclusively by Volkswagen. When Westfalia was acquired by DaimlerChrysler in 2001, VW decided to design and build their own campervan range, based on the Transporter range. The VWCV-designed camper van originally was called the Volkswagen Westfalia to provide branding continuity when it was launched in 2003; once Westfalia became its own company in 2005, VW rebranded it as the Westfalia California until 2012, when it received its present name.
Since then, VWCV have developed larger (Grand California, 2019) and smaller (Caddy California, 2021) campervans to fill out the line, based on the Crafter and Caddy, respectively.
