Happy Birthday Karmann Ghia!

My friend Raleigh informed me recently that the Karmann Ghia turns 61 this year.  Although I have never owned one, I have spent quite a bit of time in, around, and behind the wheel of these beautifully unique sports cars.  A brief history from VW Vortex tells us that by the early 50’s, VW was doing quite well, and the economy in Europe was turning.  Wilhelm Karmann, a coach builder who designed the Cabriolet for Volkswagen, approached Carrozzeria Ghia and asked them to design a sports car for Volkswagen.  The result was the Karmann Ghia.  The first cars rolled off the line in August of ’55, sales totaled more than 10,000 in the first year, and the rest is history.

My late buddy Chip, who was the closest I ever had to a brother, got a ’71 model when we were 17.  It was yellow, and Lord knows how many miles we put on that thing, but it was a bunch.  We covered pretty much all of north and central Georgia in it, and he drove it to Tampa one summer to visit his grandparents.  We used to pile in it three at a time, one of us wedged in the luggage compartment in the back, and ride for hours in the summer with the windows up through Henry County and beyond.  Why the windows up in the summer?  It was the mid-1970s.  Do the math.

Another buddy, Dennis, built a red ’66 with an absolute beast of an engine in it.  I’m not kidding, this thing could smoke a Porsche like nobody’s business.  One day, for reasons known only to our sixteen year old brains, we decided to take it trail riding on the power lines.  Dennis hit one of those concrete gas line markers at a pretty good clip, and we got wedged on it.  We had to walk back to his house and get his dad to come back with a jack to get the car un-impaled.  He wanted to know what we used for brains.  We, of course, had no answer.

The Karmann Ghia was also a spy car.  Remember the TV show “Get Smart”?  Agent 86 Maxwell Smart drove one.

I almost owned one once, a blue ’64 I was going to trade a guy a dune buggy for.  We actually made the trade and I drove it for a few days, until his mom found out about it and vetoed the deal.  I have always said that if I had it to do over, I would have bought a Ghia convertible instead of a Cabriolet.  The engines were an absolute joy to work on.  When you opened up the boot, everything was right there and easily accessible, especially in the older 40 hp models.  The spark plugs were easy to reach, there was room behind the fan shroud, and the valve covers were easy to get to from underneath.

The Ghias handled beautifully, although you had to work the gas to build up power, and “row” the car through the curves with the shifter.  But the suspension and the steering were solid, and despite the rear engine, the rear end was stable, even in the later models with the larger engines.

Speaking of the later models, in 1974 VW phased out the Karmann Ghia and replaced it with the Scirocco,  a move I won’t even dignify with words.  The only thing I will say is you never see any Sciroccos at the car shows.  But you do see the Ghias… sleek, smart and Still Cruisin’!  –J.