Volkswagen Karmann Ghia

Volkswagen Karmann Ghia at a glance

Development and production history

The idea came from outside Volkswagen. Luigi Segre of the Turin coachbuilder Ghia led the design of a coupé prototype built on a Beetle and showed it to Wilhelm Karmann in Paris in late 1953. The design was presented as a concept at the October 1953 Paris Auto Show. Volkswagen approved the project in November 1953. Styling credit is shared between Segre, Mario Boano, Sergio Coggiola and Giovanni Savonuzzi, and English Wikipedia notes that the shape was heavily inspired by Virgil Exner's Chrysler D'Elegance and K-310 concepts.

The car was shown at the 1955 Frankfurt show and at an event in Westphalia on 14 July 1955, and the first Type 14 was built at Osnabrück in August 1955. Unlike the Beetle, whose panels were joined on automated lines, the Karmann Ghia's bodies were butt-welded, shaped and finished by hand. A cabriolet joined the coupé, and the 1,500 cc engine arrived in 1967.

In 1962 Volkswagen added the Type 34, a larger and more angular coupé on the Type 3 floorpan, called the "Razor Edge Ghia" in the UK and "Der Große Karmann" in Germany. It was the fastest Volkswagen of its day and cost up to twice as much as a Beetle in many markets. But it was not officially sold in the United States, and 42,505 were built before it was dropped in 1969. The Type 14 continued until the 1974 model year; that year, rear seats were removed from North American cars. Late in 1974 the Golf-based Scirocco took its place.

Design and engineering

The Type 14 is based on the Beetle chassis with a wider floorpan, and its air-cooled drivetrain comes from the Beetle. With the first 1,192 cc engine the car weighed 820 kg and measured 4.14 m long, 1.63 m wide and 1.33 m high on a 2,400 mm wheelbase.

The Type 34 used the floorpan and drivetrain of the Volkswagen Type 3 instead. Its sharp-edged body earned its British nickname, and from 1962 it offered an electric sliding steel sunroof, one of the first cars in the world with this option. A convertible Type 34 never reached production; only 17 prototypes were built. The Brazilian TC (Touring Coupé, Type 145) of 1972–1975 was a third design, styled at Ghia by Giorgetto Giugiaro on the Type 3 / Variant platform.

Engines and drivetrain

All engines are air-cooled flat-fours mounted at the rear and driving the rear wheels. The Karmann Ghia was never fast: with the first engine it reached 120 km/h, and English Wikipedia compares the Brazilian TC's 138 km/h with 116 km/h for a Type 14. Our power converter translates the PS figures into kW and hp.

Karmann Ghia specifications

Production numbers

The German Type 14 accounts for 445,238 cars, the bulk of all Karmann Ghias. Of the 529,432 cars in the three groups of the table, about 84% are German Type 14s, 8% Type 34s and 8% Brazilian cars. Over roughly nineteen years, Osnabrück averaged more than 22,000 Type 14s a year. Coupés outnumbered cabriolets by about four and a half to one. English Wikipedia also mentions a figure of 41,600 Type 34s for South America, which conflicts with the Brazilian table; the table is used here.

The Karmann Ghia in numbers

The figures in the source also show how modest the car's performance was, and how much it changed. Engine power grew from 25 kW (34 PS) to 45 kW (61 PS), an increase of 80% over the life of the Type 14. With the first engine and a weight of 820 kg, each kilowatt had to move about 33 kg, and with the 1,584 cc engine the ratio improved considerably.

The Type 34, the fastest Volkswagen of its day and up to twice the price of a Beetle, sold barely a tenth as many cars as the German Type 14. In Brazil the later TC was almost as successful as the original Type 14 coupé there: 18,119 against 23,393. Our power-to-weight calculator compares such figures with any other car.

Legacy

The infobox of English Wikipedia lists the Porsche 914, the Scirocco and the Brazilian SP2 as successors. The Scirocco, which arrived in late 1974, is covered in our Volkswagen Scirocco article. The car underneath the Karmann Ghia is described in the Volkswagen Beetle article, and the company's wider story in our history of Volkswagen.

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