This is a very familiar scene, except for the car. It’s the bell tower of the former village of Graun (Südtirol, Italy), which was submerged when the Reschensee was created as a hydropower project, finished in 1950. We went by it numerous times when I was a little kid, and was always highly fascinated by the idea of the underwater town. But what fascinates me today is this picture from 1953, which shows a vehicle that I cannot identify. It’s obviously VW based. There were a number of coach-built VW convertibles in the late 40s and early 50s, before Karmann’s version became the official one and eventually drove the others out of business. But this one is rather unusual.
Here’s a closer look. The theater seating with the distinctly higher rear seats is unusual. I’ve just spent about 30 minutes Googling to try to find a match of some sort. Nothing. It may have been built in extremely small numbers by a small coach builder. I wonder if anyone out there can identify it?
That rear bumper almost looks like it’s made from wood, in fact, the whole car looks like a “one of one”/home built special.
Considering how many car companies used air-cooling and rear mounted engines, I wonder if it’s even VW based?
How many companies used air cooling and rear engines in 1953?
Of course it’s VW based; the wheels are a dead giveaway. The VW was by far the most popular car for re-bodying, because it was so common, cheap, and had a platform frame.
Gee, off the top of my head, Fiat, Renault, NSU…but for the early 50s NSUs were “license-built” Fiats, BMW….or were the rear-engined BMWs water-cooled?
All of those were water cooled! Well, except for the BMW, which was…air cooled. But the BMWs weren’t out by then. Gee, you’re batting a 1000 today. 🙂
“….the whole car LOOKS like a one of one”. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I ran the 1 photo through photo editing a few times that I noticed, among other things, those rolled rear fenders. Obviously that isn’t something USUALLY done in a basement or on a garage work bench. Yet I have seen cars with SIMILAR workmanship done in home workshops…and please don’t ask me to provide examples.
So I was mistaken about the air-cooled engines, I still think it’s possible this was either a one of one, a possible prototype, or was produced in such a small number that only a “handful” could survive.
I apologize if I am (somehow) portraying myself as some kind of expert….I realize for the umpteenth time I am encroaching on your KINGDOM, sorry.
Doesn’t look like it has a bumper to me.
Its wearing Beetle hubcaps those only fit VWs Ford Prefect/Anglias of the sit up and beg variety and Lseries Vauxhalls, I’d bet its a homemade VW special given the Location and width of the car itself Vauxhalls were unitary construction, and Ford ten specials are more a British/NZ thing
I agree with Howard and Bryce 100%. I definitely get a homemade vibe from it, especially because of the cut down doors. Pretty nicely done, but a notch below any coachbuilt VW I can recall.
I remember riding in a car through a town that would be flooded for a hydro project; it is an odd circ to be in a perfectly normal place that won’t “be there” tomorrow. Very Twilight Zone, although I couldn’t watch that at the time.
Various Welsh villages have been lost to hydroelectric and reservoir schemes over the years, but they normally demolished the buildings before flooding them.
This is the most common fate of such places. Of the village of Graun, only the clock tower remained, everything else having been demolished and rebuilt on the shore of the new lake. This part of the lake is actually very shallow.
Interesting. I was told as a kid that the whole town was still there underwater. I wonder if my parents were saying that for effect, or if they didn’t know, which seems unlikely given how close it is to Innsbruck.
A few more interesting tidbits, from Wikipedia:
–The church the bell tower was attached to dated to the 13th century.
–When the reservoir was created, the village of Graun was essentially moved to a new location – so it still exists, but is not where it originally was.
–This area of Italy, along the border with Austria, known as South Tyrol in English (Paul referred to it by its German name, Südtirol), was part of Austria until the end of World War I, when it was annexed by Italy under the terms of the peace treaties that ended the war. Italy apparently had some distant historical claim to the area, and there was a small Italian-speaking population, but the population of the South Tryrol was then (and had long been) overwhelmingly German in term of both language and ethnicity. Subsequent migration and attempts to Italianize the region, particularly under Mussolini’s regime, have made it less heavily German than it once was. But the majority of the population of South Tyrol as a whole is still German-speaking, and many areas (especially rural areas closer to the Austrian border) remain pretty much entirely German-speaking. The mountaineer Reinhold Messner was from the German-speaking community of South Tyrol. Today, German and Italian are both official languages of South Tyrol.
I have a picture of me standing in the river at the old Cove Palisades Park that today would have 100 ft of water over it. I also remember Hill Creek Reservoir area before and after as my grandfather was an Army engineer and worked on it, Bonneville was his first and HC was his last project.
St. Thomas, Nevada was under Lake Mead for 80 years. Now that the water levels have fallen so drastically, you can visit the remains. It’s eerie.
https://www.nps.gov/lake/learn/nature/st-thomas-nevada.htm
Looks awfully crude to be anything produced for sale. An early home built body on a VW floorpan is probably all it is.
Take into account that this is post-war Europe. Things like this little Kleinschnittger 125 were in production (pic), which looked extremely crude compared to the American cars from the same time frame. Standards were obviously quite low in this price range. Still, I mostly agree with the home built theory. VW’s platform chassis was a very neat basis for such DIY projects. Still could be built by some small coachbuilder, too. Not possible to identify 60+ years later.
As Stanislav already pointed out, during the immediate post war years there was a raft of open bodies cars based on other mechanicals. These were rarely truly homebuilt, because very few Europeans had access to the facilities to do so. They were unvariably built in small shops/coach builders who did. Making those curved-top fenders and such is no joke. And then there’s the top. Who can make one at home? I’m pretty sure it was a very small-series car like so many others at the time.
An early Wendler?
Holy crap – when I first saw this photo, I thought it was the tower of the Old Stone Church in West Boylston (Mass.) that was the only part remaining of the submerged church when the Wachusett Reservoir was created in central Mass. back in the early 1950s, I think. I wasn’t even born yet, and didn’t move to Worcester County until 1977…but knowing the unfeeling maw of the MDC (Metropolitan District Commission, the agency charged with providing clean drinking water to Boston – screw everybody else in the state, see Quabbin Reservoir creation and the decommissioning of four central Mass. towns in 1938) it would not have surprised me one damned bit to know the state government had it in for the local people in West Boylston and Sterling. Today, just make your way to the junction of state highways 12 and 140 and you will see the top of the now-roofless church out in the middle of the reservoir.
This was just one of many reasons I left Massachusetts. The western end of the state put up with too much ignominy at the hands of the pols in Boston; and when no one else in the state complained, Worcester County was next.
(My mom’s ancestors were amongst those of the Group of 60 who left Worcester in 1721 to found the town of Pelham, which at that time included today’s present high ground north of Belchertown and east of Amherst, and meandered eastward all the way downhill through the old towns of Prescott and Greenwich to the Swift River. Her ancestors were dug up and re-interred in a special graveyard on the south side of Mass. Rte 9 between Belchertown and Ware, across from the Winsor Dam entrance ot the Quabbin Reservoir grounds.)
In 1937 and ’38, once Boston ordered the decommissioning of the towns of Dana, Greenwich, Prescott and Enfield, central Mass. realized they had to fight the Boston people or forever be under their thumbs.To this day, the town of Clinton Mass. has a motto – “best town in Massachusetts by a dam site!” Good fishing at the south side of town, on the Boylston border, but Clinton lost so much land area and they never were recompensed according to state law the way they should have been.
Time may have healed most wounds…but it has yet to would all the heels who decided Boston’s drinking water was more important than thousands of homes of Massachusetts citizens.
“…when I first saw this photo, I thought it was the tower of the Old Stone Church in West Boylston (Mass.) that was the only part remaining of the submerged church when the Wachusett Reservoir was created in central Mass. back in the early 1950s, I think. I wasn’t even born yet, and didn’t move to Worcester County until 1977…but knowing the unfeeling maw of the MDC (Metropolitan District Commission, the agency charged with providing clean drinking water to Boston – screw everybody else in the state, see Quabbin Reservoir creation and the decommissioning of four central Mass. towns in 1938) it would not have surprised me one damned bit to know the state government had it in for the local people in West Boylston and Sterling. Today, just make your way to the junction of state highways 12 and 140 and you will see the top of the now-roofless church out in the middle of the reservoir…The western end of the state put up with too much ignominy at the hands of the pols in Boston; and when no one else in the state complained, Worcester County was next.”
Wachusett reservoir was created and filled between 1897 and 1908 – it pre-dates Quabbin Reservoir. Quabbin was essentially built because over time Wachusett had proven to be not enough to supply the Boston area with water. Unlike Quabbin, no entire towns were eliminated to create Wachusett, but four towns (Clinton, Sterling, Boylston and West Boylston) all saw parts of their territory go underwater.
The Old Stone Church is by the edge of the reservoir, not in the middle of the reservoir. It does have a roof on it today, and I have no memory of ever seeing it without a roof. Wikipedia indicates that fell into disrepair at one point, with the roof and three walls collapsing in 1974, but it was rebuilt in 1977.
The church is located by a narrow point in the reservoir, where Routes 12 & 140 cross it on a causeway. The river that was dammed to make the reservoir originally ran through that area, and the “town center” (main center of population) in the town of West Boylston was located in the valley that was flooded. The church is all that is left. The town center was effectively moved a short distance to the south, but the town’s population declined from 3,019 in the 1890 U.S. Census to just 1,270 in the 1910 U.S. Census. It would not exceed its 1890 level until 1960, by which time suburban spillover from Worcester was now boosting the town’s population.
“In 1937 and ’38, once Boston ordered the decommissioning of the towns of Dana, Greenwich, Prescott and Enfield [to create Quabbin Reservoir]…”
A couple of years ago, I was watching a weather report on the New England Cable News channel. At one point, they zoomed into an area at the north end of Quabbin Reservoir to show a storm in detail. When they did, I was startled to see that one of the place names that flashed on the screen was “North Dana”!
“To this day, the town of Clinton Mass. has a motto – “best town in Massachusetts by a dam site!” Good fishing at the south side of town, on the Boylston border, but Clinton lost so much land area and they never were recompensed according to state law the way they should have been.”
The town of Clinton lost about a quarter of its land area to the reservoir. The part of town that was flooded was mostly undeveloped at the time, so it didn’t cause the town to lose a lot population, but it greatly restricted the potential for future growth. Clinton’s population today is about the same as it was in 1890.
Rometsch built some beautiful aluminum bodied sports cars on the VW platform. They were not as crude as this little number though. I believe a fire killed the Rometsch company, IIRC.
Whatever it is, it; sure Fugly !
The hood has a Kubelwagon slope to it. Is it possible this is a war-surplus version that was modified?
That same thought crossed my mind. I would say it’s a distinct possibility.
looking hard ,the word muletto springs to mind.A Porche test article?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrscharroo/albums/72157631285100792 It is late here after perusing that lot I just wait for the dreams.
The steering wheel does not tally with the beetle though.
No idea what it is, but the wheelbase looks long for a VW, and the rear overhang looks too short for a VW too. There is a lot of space between the rear passengers and the axle too.
Definitely a homebuilt. Look at the front trunk lid, for example.
But what I really want to know is what’s up with the people here? At first, I thought the ones in the cars were all wearing 50s racing helmets, but that’s not exactly right. And our yachtsman and the young woman you can barely make out sitting on the bench?
Joining the homebuilt VW bandwagon. There were more than one or two such creations being built in Germany and Austria during the immediate after war years, before over-regulation by the government put an end to this (and made certain nothing like the hot rod movement in the US had any parallel in these, and many other countries hostile to self-built or modified vehicles). I suppose there is somewhere a VW nut who may know – I certainly cannot put a name on it.
Any one for a Skoda 1200 special? My thinking being that the mb was on the way..
Fascinating. I believe Pope John-Paul I was from this area, and he was the spitting image of my grandfather, whose family came from near Lake Constance in Germany.