An
air cooled Volkswagen sporting a
Type I Volkswagen engine (In addition to that there is also an extremely rare
Type 34 Karmann Ghia or 1500 Ghia, it is believed that there are only 2500 of them left). Although it was in production for almost 20 years a relatively small number were produced making them somewhat rare and a collectors item. The beauty of them is that almost all internal components of the Ghia are identical to the
VW Beetle so even though they are somewhat rare getting parts for them is never a problem. The body of it looks a bit like a
Beetle that has been stretched out. It is in my opinion one of the most beautiful cars ever produced.
A little history:
Volkswagen, in the early 1950's, was facing the prospect of selling a small line of "ugly" cars (the VW Beetle and the VW Bus) to a more demanding car buying public. VW executives felt it was necessary to introduce an "image" car to reach this new market. Several other car companies were in the same situation, most notably, Chrysler. Chrysler contracted with the Italian styling and coach building firm of Ghia to build a series of "dream" cars. While Chrysler produced some of these dream cars, one car they did not produce would eventually become, you guessed it, the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. While Chrysler worked with Ghia, Volkswagen contracted with the German coach builder, Karmann to build their "image" car. Karmann, in need of a design, approached Ghia and somehow the old Chrysler design surfaced and was modified to fit the VW Beetle floorpan. The VW executives liked what they saw and by August of 1955, the first Volkswagen Karmann Ghias rolled off the assembly line in Osnabruck, German as 1956 models. By 1958 they had released the more popular convertible version of the vehicle. In 1974 production was stopped to make way for the Scirocco.