{"id":3486,"date":"2020-06-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.secret-classics.com\/65-years-of-volkswagen-karmann-ghia\/"},"modified":"2020-10-09T16:42:21","modified_gmt":"2020-10-09T16:42:21","slug":"65-years-of-volkswagen-karmann-ghia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.secret-classics.com\/en\/65-years-of-volkswagen-karmann-ghia\/","title":{"rendered":"65 Years of Volkswagen Karmann Ghia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When production started at the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg (Germany) immediately after World War 2, thanks to the strong commitment of the British major Ivan Hurst, nobody thought of further models or body variants. From 1949 on, the coachbuilders Hebm\u00fcller and Karmann succeeded in persuading the VW plant management to produce independent convertible variants, but other coachbuilders such as Rometsch, Beutler and so on didn’t receive any support from the VW factory. At the beginning of the 1950s Wilhelm Karmann spoke with the then VW boss Heinrich Nordhoff about a sporty Coup\u00e9 based on the Beetle. First designs from his own design department were rather unconvincing. At the Italian coachbuilder and design company Ghia, Karmann finally saw the drawings for a sporty Coup\u00e9 in pontoon design, which was originally drawn by Virgil Exner for Chrysler, but was never realized as a concept car. Karmann commissioned Ghia to adapt this vehicle to the chassis of the Volkswagen, which was tackled by Luigi Segre as well as Mario Boano and his son Gian Paolo. In 1953 a white painted Coup\u00e9 prototype was ready on its wheels as a driveable prototype and was presented by Karmann to Volkswagen in Wolfsburg in November of that year. Nordhoff immediately gave the car green lights for series production, which was prepared at Karmann in Osnabr\u00fcck in the course of the following year.

At the Kasino-Hotel in Georgsmarienh\u00fctte, a small town near Osnabr\u00fcck in Germany, the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia was officially presented to journalists and representatives of the Volkswagen dealers for the first time on 14 July 1955. Opinions differed widely on the car, which was internally called ‘Type 14’. Contemporary reports have often remarked that the sporty appearance and the comparatively low-performance from its air-cooled four-cylinder boxer engine with only 30 hp didn’t go well together. The German car magazine ‘Das Auto, Motor und Sport’ even wrote that it is a “parody of a fast car”. From August 1955, the first Karmann Ghia units rolled off the assembly line to dealers at prices starting at 7,500 DM in Germany. Many customers already waited for them. Just one year later, the ten thousandth copy rolled off the production line. At the IAA (Frankfurt Motor Show) 1957, Karmann finally presented the Cabriolet version of the Type 14 on the Volkswagen stand, production of which began two months later at prices starting at 8,250 DM. Until the summer of 1959, the Karmann Ghia was available in its original form, which differed from the vehicles built after the works holidays by using smaller air vents at the front and small tail lights integrated into the rear wings.<\/p>\n\n\n

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