Saturday, January 5, 2013

Junkyard Find: 1970 Volkwsagen Karmann Ghia

I see lots and lots of air-cooled Beetles in self-service wrecking yard, and this has been the case for the 30 years I've been frequenting such places. There seems to be an inexhaustible supply of old Type 1 Bugs slowly trickling into junkyards, and I usually ignore them (though I thought this '73 Super Beetle was interesting enough to photograph). It's not that I don't like these cars— I've owned a few and thought they were great fun— but mostly they're just background. Junked Karmann Ghias, on the other hand, get my attention. Sure, they're Beetles under the skin, but you just don't see many of the crypto-sporty air-cooled VWs these days. Here's one I found at a snow-covered Denver self-service yard last week.
Even though I moved to Denver from the San Francisco Bay Area two years ago, this snow-in-the-junkyard business still seems wrong. Midwesterners keep telling me that I don't know the meaning of snow, but still… wrong. Anyway, all Karmann Ghias that show up in these yards get picked over in a hurry. This one still has a few goodies left, but it had only been out on the yard for a few days when I found it.
The last owner of this car either had a great sense of humor or no sense of humor. Hey, look, Karmann Ghias had electric rear-window defrosters (to go with the hydrocarbon-o-riffic exhaust-heat-powered interior heaters.
Someone has grabbed the engine out of this car, which came with a 1600cc air-cooled boxer four making 57 horsepower. Air-cooled VWs get engine swaps about every two years, so there's no telling what this car's most recent powerplant might have been.
In stock form, these cars didn't even come close to being sporty or quick, though they were much more fun to drive than the even-worse-than-the-Malaise-MGB horsepower numbers might suggest. Thing is, the transaxle can handle lots of additional power and aftermarket engine upgrades make it pretty cheap to double your horsepower. Then the sensible little two-seater becomes a homicidal spinout monster with the fuel tank perched right over the driver's knees.

01 - 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Down On the Junkyard - Picture Courtesy of Murilee Martin 02 - 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Down On the Junkyard - Picture Courtesy of Murilee Martin 03 - 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Down On the Junkyard - Picture Courtesy of Murilee Martin 04 - 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Down On the Junkyard - Picture Courtesy of Murilee Martin 05 - 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Down On the Junkyard - Picture Courtesy of Murilee Martin 06 - 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Down On the Junkyard - Picture Courtesy of Murilee Martin 07 - 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Down On the Junkyard - Picture Courtesy of Murilee Martin 08 - 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Down On the Junkyard - Picture Courtesy of Murilee Martin 09 - 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Down On the Junkyard - Picture Courtesy of Murilee Martin 10 - 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Down On the Junkyard - Picture Courtesy of Murilee Martin 11 - 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Down On the Junkyard - Picture Courtesy of Murilee Martin 12 - 1970 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia Down On the Junkyard - Picture Courtesy of Murilee Martin

from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com




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