MoneywebDRIVE: Investment Classics
At the 1955 show, the
beautiful, sensuous,
Karmann Ghia made
its public debut at
the Messe in downtown Frankfurt, and it
was undoubtedly a
show-stopper.
The Frankfurt International Motor Show
opens its doors to the public today – September 17 – and it is more than likely that a
special tribute will be paid at the Volkswagen stand to one of the most eye-catching
cars ever conceived by the Wolfsburg concern. This year’s show marks 60 years of the
Karmann Ghia.
At the 1955 show, the beautiful, sensuous,
Karmann Ghia made its public debut at
the Messe in down-town Frankfurt, and
it was undoubtedly a show-stopper. Yet
few people viewing the car for the first
time would have realised that beneath
that sensational shape – styled by Luigi Segre of the Italian carrozzeria Ghia,
and hand-crafted by one of the oldest
coach-builders in the world at that time –
Karmann of Osnabruck – beat the heart of
a humble Volkswagen Beetle.
The original Karmann Ghia coupe was
powered by a 1 192 cc air-cooled four-cyl-
36
inder motor identical to the original Type
One Volkswagen – in those days, the term
Beetle was not used officially for the Volkswagen sedan. The rest of the mechanical
ancillaries were Beetle too, although the
floor-pan was widened slightly to accept
the two-plus-two body, which was built
and mated to the otherwise Beetle-like
chassis at the Karmann factory located
east of Hanover.
Unfortunately, this reliance on stock Beetle
power meant that the Ghia was not exactly
a firebrand when it came to performance,
especially as it looked as though it would
take on a miniature Ferrari with one of the
spark plugs disconnected!
But what VW had created was “Beetle in
a party dress” and in fact this was the forerunner of many similar cars marketed today,
where the accent is on style as much as performance. Think Scirocco for the VW brand
and some of the Korean coupes too.