There aren't many companies with the capital to design, test and order short runs of often slow selling stuff for 30+ year old vehicles, and Brexit has limited the import of some of the available European stuff, but that market has changed a bit due to TUV and other regulations and realistically most of the new stuff is now being produced for the hoards of T5 and T6 boys and girls who are happily spending money on their nice, newer vans. It's hard enough to get standard new stuff for our vans other than cheap made in china plastic and rubber bits. We still have an amazing amount of stuff available, some of which I didn't think would ever be remanufactured, but in a changing world we will see simple things like springs, dampers, clutches and the like become increasingly hard to source as the companies that could make them focus on the here and now.
Most of us got into these vans late 90s early 2000s when they were cheap and plentiful and lots of original used parts were available as well as genuine parts from VW, that is no longer the case.
US market is much bigger and GoWesty have capital to do it and a market to sell into and quickly recycle that investment, they have also been quite hardnosed as a business, and stayed largely dedicated to the Vanagon but look at their site they are out of stock of lots of stuff now and getting stuff made is harder than it was 5 or 10 years ago, excess capacity has been lost in the pursuit of efficiency and old skills are being lost all the time for a multitude of reasons, and it won't be long before these vehicles are largely forced off the road, so if you aren't doing a lot of miles going back to stock might be your best bet, and just put up with the deteriorating roads; dampers are cheap enough and there's a choice of stock spec available from plenty of sources at all price points, but springs do seem to be quite limited now.
Paul at Vantopia was selling the Schwenk springs, not sure if he'll be getting more in; CVC used to be best buddies with GoWesty but don't seem to be in bed with them to the same extent as they were, but have made new relationships with other suppliers.
YMMV as the yanks say
