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How the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, a Chrysler concept car of Italian design, became a German classic.
The Good-Looking VW
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Let’s be honest, as cute as the Volkswagen Beetle might be it’s not, and never was, the coolest looking car on the road. Same goes for the Type 2/microbus. Then there’s the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. Sure, it shares the same classic Beetle underpinnings, but the Karmann Ghia turns heads in a way a Beetle could only dream of. Sleek and sophisticated, the Karmann Ghia is one of the most indelible mid-20th-century designs. It is the triumph of good taste over practicality, of high style over raw power.
This is the story of Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, which debuted on this day, July 14th, at Kasino Hotel in Westphalia, Germany in 1955.
Development of the Karmann Ghia
Back in the early 1950s, Volkswagen was happily churning out thousands of Beetles for eager customers. The classic rear-wheel drive, rear-engine, air-cooled layout was a winner, good enough for the microbus, the Type 82 Küblewagen (later to become the Thing in the US), and even the Porsche 356. What Volkswagen didn’t have was a halo car design as good as their architecture.
Enter Luigi Segre of the Italian design house Carrozzeria Ghia and Wilhelm Karmann, heir to the Karmann coachbuilder. Both were keen to make their mark and agreed that the Beetle’s platform was ripe for a more eye-catching design. With Karmann’s encouragement, Segre and other designers at Ghia set about creating a full prototype. Segre invited executives from Karmann and Volkswagen to France to see the working prototype, fearing Volkswagen might turn down the proposal if it were solely based on sketches. The gambit worked and both Karmann and Volkswagen loved the design.
Borrowed but Beguiling Good Looks
The unique, curvy design was striking indeed. What it wasn’t was wholly original. A few years prior, Ghia had been working with Chrysler on dream/show car designs including a concept called the Chrysler d’Elegance, notable for its flowing rear fender line. Having worked with Virgil Exner, Chrysler’s head of design, on this prior project, Luigi Segre had seen fit to evolve the d’Elegance concept’s design into a real production car for their collaboration with Karmann. Exner was reportedly pleased with the outcome, as Exner’s son would later note, “it was a direct, intentional swipe off of the Chrysler d’Elegance…Nobody minded it, it was wonderful.”
The Karmann Ghia is indeed an unusual design, notable not just for its beauty, but for its audacious impracticality. Unlike most cars past and present, the Karmann Ghia doesn’t have panel segments. There are no seams, nothing to break the flowing body except hood, trunk, and doors. A single unibody design is certainly striking to the eye, but it is also problematic when it comes to body work. Repair work on its body is notoriously labor intensive (and expensive). But then so was its initial construction. The Karmann Ghia’s body was meticulously hand welded. A lot of work and care went into building each of the 365,912 coupes and 79,326 cabriolets that were built from 1955 to 1972.
The Slow Car Wins
The Volkswagen Karmann Ghia might have looked sporty, but it was not a fast car. Not only did it share the Beetle’s chassis (widened by four inches), but it also shared the same engine, which, starting out in 1955 was a 1,192-cc flat-four making roughly 36 horsepower. The Karmann Ghia’s boxer engine would grow with time, in tandem with the Beetle’s, eventually topping out at 1,584 cc and 60 horsepower. So still not fast.
Volkswagen’s marketing leaned into the fact that the Karmann Ghia wasn’t fleet of foot. In a television ad, the Karmann Ghia, rather than bursting through a sheet of white paper, merely bounces off it. Another ad proclaims that while the Karmann Ghia isn’t as fast as a Maserati or Lamborghini, it was at least as good looking. A print ad featured a Karmann Ghia in racing stripes with the tag line, “You’d Lose.”
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Whatever the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia lacked in horsepower it more than compensated for with its beauty, charm, and dare I say, sheer cuteness. Its seamless body is the equivalent of wearing a tuxedo to a 400-meter dash. Sure, you might not win the race, but you’ll certainly be the best dressed.
Always wanted one.
The entire chassis was not widened. It was only widened in the footwell for the front seat passengers. I know as I tried to drop a Gina body on a beetle chassis.
Bough new one in ’73 wish I had it now.