5 Things To Know About The VW Karmann Ghia

hey everybody it's me Jason torch insky and I'm here with a car that I've always loved the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia so right now I'd like to tell you five really interesting things about this car [Music] so the first and possibly the most amazing thing about the Karmann Ghia is that the design of the car which is really the main reason why we all know and love this car so much was actually stolen it was actually stolen from a Chrysler Show car from 1952 and it's pretty incredible how it happened in the mid-50s Volkswagen was doing great with the beetle but they wanted something else to expand the line and bring a little more attention to the brand so they decided they wanted a sporty coupe a little fun sports car and a convertible to do this they reached out to their convertible builders Carmen who'd been building convertible beetles for years and Carmen then reached out to Ghia to do the styling gia was a famous Italian design house and it worked with all kinds of people including the Chrysler Corporation so back in the early 50s gia and Chrysler were working together to make a series of show cars they were working with Chrysler's lead designer Virgil Exner and one of the cars they created was this beautiful massive thing called the d'Elegance it was a car that had long flowing lines and had a beautiful kick-up fender it was a really stunning concept car and they showed this in 1952 it was a big hit on the show car circuit but nothing ever really came of it so the d'Elegance and its design kind of aesthetic were a little bit forgotten until Volkswagen came to Ghia and asked for a design for a new sports car gia looked around for what they had and they found the old d'Elegance designs and realized you know what this would actually work really well as a sports car for Volkswagen because partially it had a long rear deck which worked well to fit the VW's rear-mounted engine in and the length of the deck also meant you could get a little extra luggage area right here so they scaled the design down and they cleaned it up a little bit they got rid of the radiator grille since there was no radiator and they didn't need it and the end result was the Karmann Ghia the lovely taut little Karmann Ghia and if you look at the two designs side-by-side there's no question where this thing came from this line that goes from the base of the of the body all and kicks up to the rear fender that's completely from the d'Elegance design all of these are exactly from the d'Elegance design just again scaled down a little bit the second amazing thing about the Karmann Ghia is that for a car that was mass-produced it's almost a handmade car now the design of the body was such that it doesn't have any seams in it at all really the only thing on Agia that are one-piece are the hood the doors and the rear deck everything else is hand welded hand filled hand contoured and it's one gigantic monolithic piece so what that means is normally where you'd have a seam between body panels there are literally no body panels to have to have lines in there's no cut lines here you can see the fender flows directly into the hood area and there's no cut line no body panels that also means if you get in a wreck it's a very big deal to fix it because you can't just bolt off a fender and bolt it back on like this front little nose part of the gear it's pretty much everyday in existence has been hit in this nose at some point and to fix it requires a lot of intense work and labor in fact companies would sell aftermarket grilles that were fake that you can stick on here just to cover nose damage because it was such a pain in the butt but even though it's a pain it really is beautiful and it really is what makes this car look so so sculptural and so great it's these flowing lines like a heavenly more sculpture the only other car I can think of that's even close to this would be a Volvo p1800 it was the same way but pretty much nothing else is like it where it's just one beautiful hand formed piece of metals and a lot of work went into making gear bodies if you ever look at how the assembly lines looked for this it wasn't like a regular car assembly line it was literally hand artisans shaping sanding welding doing all this really intense hand labor to make this car and that's kind of what makes these cars so special even today the third really interesting thing about the Karmann Ghia is that for a sports car if you actually entered it into any kind of real race you would lose and Volkswagen knew this and this was a big part of their advertising plan for the Karmann Ghia in fact there was an ad that showed Agia with racing stripes and a number on the side and the tagline was just you'd lose because that's not what this car was about this was not really a sports car this was a sport team car it was a car that felt sporty and looked great and that was it mechanically it was just straightforward Volkswagen Beetle stuff so that means in the beginning 36 horsepower engines 40 horsepower engines by no means anything that would inspire fear into anything faster than say a drunk tortoise but later on they did get a little better eventually they had 50 horsepower and by the 70s a 60 horsepower engine which made it quick enough to have fun with but again never a real sports car and Volkswagen was always very honest about that and that made it the car even a little bit more charming because it took all the pressure off you didn't have to think you could beat everybody off the stoplight because everyone knew you wouldn't you just happen to look great leaving that stoplight [Music] most people know that the dia was built on the standard Volkswagen Beetle chassis but that's not entirely true well it was mostly the exact same as the beetle chassis the Ghia chassis was actually widened by 4 inches because the Ghia is a full-width design it's 4 inches wider than a beetle was so they made the floor pans of the Ghia 4 inches wider and that Ghia pan actually got used for a lot of other things including the famous Volkswagen thing which was a sort of Jeep like beetle that was built on the Ghia pan because it's four inches wider fifth thing about the Ghia that even though it was never really intended to be a true sports car it found a niche as a sports car a little bit later in its life so the Porsche 356 of course was the famous Porsche that got everything really started it was based loosely on the beetle design and it was it became its own very specific kind of thing it was a sports car in its own right got its own character and personality now they quit making 356 in the mid-60s but they kept making Jia's all the way up into the mid 70s and there came a time when the power levels in the gear had risen enough that if you wanted a Porsche 356 and say 1974 you wanted to buy a new car that was as close to a Porsche 356 as possible you didn't want to hold 911 you just wanted something like the old 356 a Karmann Ghia was by far your best choice because really the Ghia is extremely close to a Porsche 356 it's not as powerful or quite as nice in a lot of ways but it's still a lovely design it's designed essentially the same as a 356 and there were so many aftermarket ways to get a little more power out of it that you could get a car that was effectively a poor man's Porsche using a Karmann Ghia it really kind of became more of its own thing like that and I would say the 70s when it was sort of your only choice you could have Porsche 356 feeling and character for a lot less money thanks to the Karmann Ghia [Music]

Channel: Jalopnik

Views: 630,315

Keywords: jalopnik, Jason Torchinsky, Jason Drives, 5 Things, VW Karmann-Ghia, Old Volkswagens, volkswagen, classic cars, Chrysler D'Elegance, 50's cars, chrysler, chrysler design, vw, vw karmann ghia convertible, karmann ghia review, karmann ghia convertible, ghia coupe, karmann ghia, volkswagen karmann ghia (automobile model), ghia cabriolet

Id: HtYgchfDx-s

Length: 7min 38sec (458 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 12 2018