Coming down College Hill on a late walk, few blocks from home, what do I see? Something that I have not seen since May 26, 2009, when I last found and shot a 412. That was a two-door, and its CC write-up is here, titled “VW’s Deadly Sin #1” no less. Deadly Sins or not, I’m actually quite fond of this version, because the 411/412 worked so much better as a wagon. I mean that both stylistically and practically; I’d take this in a heartbeat.
Unfortunately, my iPhone camera totally flubbed the shots of the front and side, but we can do a bit of borrowing. But this is by far the best angle anyway.
Here’s how that sedan looked back in 2009. The hunchback on these just really doesn’t work.
But it all comes together quite well in the wagon. It’s really the ultimate air cooled VW, meaning all the pros and not many cons. It’s very practical, with a pretty frunk, as well as a cargo area in the rear. Great traction, decent handling, and power is just a matter of how much you want back there, given that its original engine has most likely expired a while back. Or how about a Subaru boxer back there? Just need to find a way to install a radiator in front without looking too horrible. Now that would be a bit of a sleeper.
OK; my imagination is running a bit wild. I see it as a neo-Corvair. How about a 180hp Corvair turbo engine swap?
The 411/412 sedans were duds, on so many levels; no imagination stimulation whatsoever. But the Variant gets my juices flowing.
I’ll bet it’s been a lot longer ago than 2009 since I have seen one in real life. Way longer. I agree, this wagon is an attractive car – in a very VW kind of way. It was always a puzzling car to me. The Dean of Boys at the school where I started 7th grade is the only person I ever actually knew who owned one of these – a silver-blue sedan.
I just can’t get over the fact it’s a two-door, with a panel shutline and a pillar more or less where they’d be on a four door. The German auto industry resisted putting four doors on wagons for a strangely long time, was it for tax reasons?
The panel shutline on the two door sedan and wagon are substantially further to the rear than the actual door line on the 4 door. Undoubtedly VW had reasons to not press that in a single panel.
Two door wagons were still very common in Germany, as were 2 door sedans. Can’t quite explain it, but it’s some kind of cultural thing.
Growing up, next door, lived a Norwegian and his family. He loved VW. In Chicago, everything rusted into pieces within three years, so he went through a lot of cars – we all did. Two of his cars were 412s – a silver and a yellow one. Since his son was my age, I was often in one of his cars about once a week. So, I have ridden in a 412 on a regular basis as a kid.
First off, it was roomier than all the Beetles, which were everywhere in our blue-collar neighborhood as a second family car, in competition with Ramblers. The 412 was a step up from the Beetle in comfort, size, roominess and usefulness. Yet, the interior was still spartan VW. Not a luxury touch anywhere. Black vinyl seats, the floor shifter that jutted right out of the floor, and an only slightly nicer padded dash.
The nose of those cars were weirdly hopped up – 180 degrees opposite from the common sports car the teen were driving. The entire vehicle was really nerdy and weird. And SLOW. I used to believe that the old man just drove like an old man – (he was in his 50’s, on his second family!), but when we got a chance to tinker with the 412 after we were old enough and it hadn’t completely rusted out, we discovered that it was a slow pig of a ride. We couldn’t get it to move any faster. Riding around in it was embarrassing. We always had someone on our tail.
Rust was a huge problem. Within five years, there was no front fender left behind the tires. The floor boards rusted out. The front end rusted. The 412 ended up looking like some kind of sick mutant. The paint flaked. While it was still sound like a Beetle, it wasn’t salvageable by the time Chris and I were able to mess with it. We couldn’t save it. My mom wouldn’t let me ride in it, except to school or scouts. All cars rusted back then, but the 412s were amazingly poor regarding rust proofing.
My Chicago rust story: in Hyde Park, there was an abandoned early Honda Accord sedan whose strut towers rusted out while the car sat. First one side of the car sank a bit. Then a few months later, the entire front end of the car just dropped and the hood popped open when the second strut mount gave out and ceased to connect the car to the front suspension.
A while after that the city finally got around to towing it.
Forty years ago, a neighbor across the street had a 412 wagon also in yellow. I remember I found it strange to hear the Beetle engine sound coming from it.
This is one of the few VWs from which I liked the styling, although there is a bit too much front overhang.
I like the shape of all of these, they modernized the Squareback etc quite well and I don’t mind the non-variant variants either for that matter. Quite a surprising find, although if it’ll be anywhere, it’ll be there where you found it. Tangentially related I’ve been generally quite pleased with how the iPhone handles low light conditions, I think it does better at that than it does with very bright/harsh mid-day lighting.
The problem was that it popped the flash for my profile and front 3/4 shot. And I didn’t realize how bad they were as a consequence until later. I should have turned the flash off as this one is quite usable.
I think the biggest issue is that for a price roughly equivalent to a Pontiac Catalina, you got a car that looked nearly identical to the Type III, with which it shared the showroom floor. At least the four-door fastback offered something a little more distinct.
However, count me as a fan of the Squareback design, but I would prefer a pre-1970 Type III over this one.
Agree with Paul this would make a great sleeper, but both a 180 hp Corvair 6 cylinder or a Subaru would require a lot of custom fabrication. As I wrote 7 years ago, how about a built up Type 4 engine? Maybe start with a 2.0 L bus engine. Jake Raby is a well-known, if expensive and sometimes controversial Type 4 “guru”.
” Maybe start with a 2.0 L bus engine” But that’s what’s in it already, right? The bus used the Type 4 2.0L engine, right? But yes, these can be enhanced.
Of course. Guess I should have written, “Pull the original 1.7 or 1.8 engine, replace with a hotted-up 2.0 bus engine”, suitably modified to produce more hp than the torque-biased bus specification. But as Roader writes below, if plenty of transaxle kits available, then Corvair transplant may be most cost effective per hp.
A turbo Corvair engine would be too tall to fit underneath the engine cover. Type 3 and 4 wagon engine swaps would require a pretty flat engine, like a normally aspirated Corvair out of a wagon or 95.
As I recall all US Type 4s came with a gas heater standard so keeping one air cooled wouldn’t be a problem.
I’ve always been fascinated by by the 411/412
twins, due to my dad having bought a new Type 3 wagonbavk in the day, the 411/412 never being sold in my country and VWs seemingly complete lack of understanding and foresight where car design was gravitating to.
One wonders were VW would be now if Audi (and NSU) hadn’t being around.
And there’s more of where this came from here….
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/automotive-history-vws-stillborn-big-wide-car-for-america-the-amiwagen-or-911-sedan/
I’m one of the few, the proud, who can say he grew up driving a 411 and a 412. My parents were big VW customers – Mom went through two Squarebacks, and graduated to the swank 411 and then a 412 after the 411 got mashed in a wreck.
They were a little more lux than described above. The vinyl was much softer than the usual VW plastic – and remember, everything was vinyl at the time. I recall some cheap fake wood trim bits. I recall the big luxury was the heater that ran independent of the engine. Nice in a Seattle winter – but probably a carbon monoxide hazard once rust set in. The rest of the HVAC was the usual VW unmarked levers on the floor that made no sense whatsoever. (I remember my Dad chewing me out royally once when I couldn’t get the defroster going on the freeway – there was just no easy way to remember how to adjust the various levers to get that result.)
The driving experience was awful. Slow as all get out. Driving it meant flooring it most of the time. And the front end was so light compared to the rest of the car its directional stability in event the slightest wind was really bad. Overall awful.
The 412 was really quite handsome, and the Type 4 engine had the hydraulic lifters that freed the engine from the 3,000 mile service cycle. The radial tires, pre-heater system, and fully automatic transmission were supposed to translate as “luxury.” Luxury wasn’t ever what Volkswagens were about though, and the whole idea of the Type 4 fell on deaf ears.
Plenty of non-VW engine-to-VW transaxle kits out there for almost any engine you could think of.
Back in the 70’s I bought a conversion kit to put a Corvair engine and trans in my ’71 Westphalia. It was a very easy swap; no bellhousing adapter required and the gearing was friendlier with the Corvair trans. Also, no need to reverse the engine rotation.
I probably put 30,000 miles on the van. Late-model Westphalia drivers would look at it questioningly when it cruised past them at 65mph uphill. Type 4s had similar engine/trans combos as 72 and later Type 2s, I think.
I knew a guy in Los Gatos who had a Corvair-powered T2 bus. It sounded great and scooted right along. It intrigued me more than a wee bit.
So the VW shift linkage worked with the Corvair transmission? Or?
I drove a T2 Bus that had a Corvair engine with the Powerglide installed. An aftermarket floor shifter was mounted where the old shifter was. Moved out pretty well. I’m thinking Roader had an automatic as well.
Yes quite apparently so. This one that I was exposed to had an adapter to mount to the VW transaxle. By Crown, almost certainly, as Crown made them for years to do that, starting in the early-mid ’60s. Folks put Corvair engines in their Beetles, which must have done wonders for their weight distribution and oversteer. But oh, the traction! 🙂
I remain confused about the market positioning of the 411/412. When I was a kid and first saw these, I assumed they were a replacement for the Type 3 – the new squareback wagon and fastback 2 door sedan looked like more bulbous versions of them – yet both models were produced simultaneously in the late 1960s and early 1970s and were side by side in the showroom, with the Type 4 only outlasting its older sibling by one year. There doesn’t seem to be enough difference in size, features, or styling to warrant selling both of them.
Besides sticking with air-cooled rear engines too long, VW was really slow in adopting rear doors. Surely, most wagon buyers by this time wanted a four door, but VW didn’t offer one until the second year of the Passat/Dasher.
VW badly needed something a bit bigger and a lot roomier than the Type 3, which was really just a glorified Beetle with a somewhat wider body, but the same wheelbase and general interior proportions, including lousy rear leg room.
The 411/412 was all-new, and had a unibody instead of the body-on-platform. And a much larger trunk, thanks to the front struts. It really was a big improvement space-wise.
But otherwise, it was a huge mistake, as the world had moved on from rear engines. It was slow, thirsty and just all-round obsolete compared to the brilliant Audi 80 (Fox). Which explains why VW quickly created the Passat from the 80, and let the 412 die, along with the Type 3, which was even more absurdly obsolete.
The 411 was not intended as a replacement for the Type 3; a step above it in every way, although realistically it was the same target buyer: VW die-hards.
Anyone who wasn’t a VW diehard would barely notice it was an all-new car. I thought when I first saw them that it was just a facelifted Type 3 with larger windows, kind of like the mid-’60s Bug when they made the windows bigger and later changed the lights and bumpers. Had there not been a new four door model, I would have paid even less attention to them.
As I browse through one of my favorite car sites and see these beautiful “old” beasts, I can’t help but fear for their survival. The California Air Resources Board has successfully initiated retroactive smog laws on diesel vehicles over 14,500 GVWR, saying that any engine older than 2010 is either being forced out of compliance NOW or soon will be. It really is only a matter of time before CA turns its talons towards ALL vehicles, and finally realizes its socialistic wish to rid the world of what it considers to be a threat to humanity. There is apparently no stopping these self-righteous hypocrites, as they have state-wide one-party rule to back them up.
A less ominous version
Paul: powerglide. The shift cable length from the ’68 donor car had the RNDL shifter right next to the driver’s seat, in the Westphalia’s front-back aisle.
In the picture above with the profile view of the shark-finned yellow wagon, there appears to be an Edsel coming down the street…a CC two-for that would be unusual even in Eugene!
And a gold Edsel at that. Very neat.
Less interesting is the PT Cruiser at the blue house with what seems to be a Saran-Wrap-and-duct tape window.
My memory of this car is associated with another Hertz co-driver that I worked with a lot the summers of 1977 and 1978, as this was his car.
I wasn’t quite 20 yet, and he was ancient (actually probably the same age I am now) as most of the drivers were understandably young…I don’t think we even got minimum wage, we were paid by the trip…and I was far from the fastest driver. He was paternalistic in that he indicated to me that I shouldn’t count on driving for Hertz as a career; I assured him that although I loved cars, I was in College and ultimately had another career in mind.
Now…I kind of wish I was still driving for Hertz…the cars are different, not as unique, but it was fun and a time before I had much responsibility. I was driving a Datsun then, wouldn’t you know it I moved to VW shortly thereafter (1981) and never left. I’d be surprised if this guy were still alive now, but if he was, I was wondering what car he’d be driving.