You can only hope that " needs a engine" means something will be simple,but I doubt it.  If it really does need a engine get ready to apply for a federal grant. I see a few of these engines for sale,but I wouldn't trust one as far as I could see it. They sometimes made it to 70-80 k most didn't. I have serviced a bunch of these varments and they are no fun at all to work on and having to tell the owner he is going to have to spend about $3500 for a factory re-man  engine plus the labor to install it ( this is 10 year old prices).
    I had a good customer who had to have one of these critters . He had found a really nice Westy with about 60K on the clock at the VW dealer in Dalton Ga. He paid top dollar with NO warranty. It lasted about 2 days before it started pouring water from the heads. I told him pour some stop-leak in it get rid of it (this comes from past experence with this problem). He never made it to the parts store before #4 rod made its presents known by showing itselve on the outside of the case.
    I don't know about with yours being a auto-matic tranny if you have the option to replace your engine with a diesel or gas Rabbit engine ( like in South American models which never used the Water-boxer engine)  or Subaru ( 120 hp) but if you are going to keep the van ,I would check into it before I replaced it  with a VW water-boxer. I liked my Mom better than that. :lol:

You must be living right or one of the luckest people around . A bunch of old factory trained Techs that I worked with for years were sitting around a couple of years ago talking about some of VWs brilliant  designs according to them ,and wondering why, if they were that great, where are they now after only a few years in production.