’70 VW Karmann Ghia coupe / Union Jack Vintage Cars
I sold my Datsun 1200 when I went to England for a year in pursuit of my bachelor’s degree. I knew I had no need for a car there, as I could walk the two miles to the university or hitch a ride. However, I missed having some kind of motorized transport, so I bought an old Puch moped for 60 pounds sterling. The Puch (pronounced “pook”) had a 2-stroke engine; therefore I had to squirt a little oil into the fuel tank every time I added petrol.
My favorite adventure with my Puch was the time it putt-putted me twenty miles to Longleat House, the ancestral home of the 6th Marquess of Bath. (A Marquess ranks below a duke and above an earl. Unlike “Duchess,” the title “Marquess” belongs to a man. English is a curious language.)
Longleat House / historichouses.org
This particular Marquess opened his house and grounds to the public to help him pay for their maintenance and taxes. Attractions included a complicated maze and a wild animal park with lions roaming freely – the park was not suitable for people on mopeds. Of course, the reason I went to Longleat in November of 1975 wasn’t to see lions or mazes… I wanted to see rally racing.
1975 RAC Rally – Stig Blomqvist driving his V4 Saab 96
A Royal Automobile Club (RAC) Rally involves cars racing down narrow forest lanes one after another at high speed. I don’t understand the rules any more than I understand cricket, but I believe there are stopwatches involved. The other spectators and I stood inches from the road as drivers like Stig Blomqvist in his Saab 96 whizzed by. If any missed a turn and spun off the track (Stig wasn’t one of them) we’d all hurry to push them back onto the course. It was great fun!
At the end of the school year I returned to the U.S. where I had a summer job working for the Environmental Protection Agency. I used $1,200 of my earnings to buy a 1970 Karmann Ghia with 35,000 miles on the odometer. I’d had difficulties driving my Datsun in winter weather, and I knew rear-engined VWs had a reputation for being good in snow. This one was.
Air-cooled VWs also had a reputation for inadequate heaters, but I suppose that’s why wool sweaters were invented. I controlled the heat with two levers mounted to the floor between the front seats. When the cables rusted in place a few years later, I got in the habit of crawling under the car twice a year, in fall and in spring, to turn the heat on or off.
The Ghia weighed over 200 pounds more than a VW Beetle, but it had the same 57HP 1600cc engine, so the only time I passed a Triumph or MG was if it was going in the opposite direction. Compared to the Beetle, the Ghia was a couple of inches longer and wider, yet it managed to have less usable interior space. Later, when my future wife and I had our future daughter, I don’t believe I even tried to put our baby’s car seat in the back of the Ghia.
I met my future wife, who was an American like me, when we were students in England. We had no WhatsApp at the time, which meant that our only communication with home was using air-mail stationery printed on thin blue paper. We had each other for company, and we went for long walks in the countryside, during which she told me all about her family. (I assure you that this is relevant to my Karmann Ghia story.)
I learned that my girlfriend had five brothers, all of whom were tobacco-chewing, deer-hunting hockey players. Her father also hunted and chewed tobacco, however he’d given up hockey. They were big men, and I’ll admit I was more than a little apprehensive when it came time for me to meet her family after we’d returned to the States. Therefore I invited my roommate to go with me for moral support; he knew my girlfriend too so it was natural that he’d come along for a visit.
I drove us three hours north in my Karmann Ghia. The car had frameless windows that didn’t quite meet their rubber seals, so there was a whistle at highway speeds. To quiet the whistle, my buddy stuffed some paper in the crack and didn’t mention until later that they were the directions to my girlfriend’s house. We’d gone about halfway when it began to rain and I put on the windshield wipers, which went back and forth hypnotically. Then the passenger-side wiper began to go forth and back, instead of back and forth, as it worked itself loose from its linkage. My friend quickly rolled down his window to grab for the wiper as it sailed into the darkness. He missed it, and he lost the directions, too.
Nowadays I’d tell Android Auto to navigate where I want to go. However, on a dark rainy night in the 1970s I had to remember all the stories my girlfriend had told me on our long walks in the English countryside, and translate those memories into left and right turns. It must have worked somehow, as I got to her house eventually, and we’re still married a half-century later.
Quebec City in winter / toeuropeandbeyond.com
If ever you get married in the middle of winter and your car doesn’t have a good heater, the least logical honeymoon itinerary is to drive to Quebec City in a snowstorm. I can still remember snowflakes blowing in our faces from the windshield defroster vents. My wife’s uncle had hidden a note under the fuel filler door on the Ghia’s fender in front of where my new bride was sitting, a note that said “Kiss me – I just got married.” Alas, none of the gas station attendants in Quebec spoke English, so my wife remained unkissed except by me.
I was pleased to find on the Internet photos of a dark-green 1970 Karmann Ghia just like mine, only shinier. Look at the photo of the front trunk and you’ll see it has ample room for three wrenches and that’s about all. You can also see the plastic tube that is connected to the spare tire to pressurize the windshield washer fluid tank.
At the other end of the car is the engine compartment, with rust under the battery just like my old Ghia had. I learned quite a lot working on that engine with my grease-stained copy of a repair manual written “for the compleat idiot.” I think I still have a timing light somewhere in my basement workshop, along with a tach/dwell meter and other tools I only half-remember how to use.
I’ve owned about twenty cars in fifty-plus years. My Karmann Ghia is the only one where, from time to time, I’d find a business card tucked under a windshield wiper – the replacement wiper, I mean – asking me to call if ever I want to sell it. I did sell the Ghia after six years, when I moved to England once again, this time with my wife and our daughter.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1971 Karmann Ghia – The Fairest Volkswagen Of Them All
1973 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia (Type 14) Cabriolet – Wie K-G In Frankreich
Curbside Classic: 1963 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia – Patina Overachiever
1967 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia – The Perfect Curbside Classic For The Crunchy Granola Set?
Good story! I had a ’65 Ghia and found the same problems. The Ghia did have three advantages over Beetles to make up for the worse performance. The rear area with the “seat” folded was a usable trunk; there was a defroster vent under the rear window; and the battery was in the engine compartment, not under the seat.
In the past I’ve heard countless stories about how Karmann Ghia owners would drive up to Canada and then buy liquor which they would hide in the storage compartment behind the rear seat. Then they would smuggle the liquor into the U.S. without declaring it at customs and not paying the customs duty tariff on it at the U.S. border crossing when they drove back. I’ve never heard of any of them getting caught.
I bought a 1967 Ghia in 1967. Kept it until 1970 and traded for a Camaro. I finally wanted a car that was warm in the winter. I did get a traffic ticket once for going 80 mph on a straight federal highway with the Ghia.
Good story. I’ve always liked Karmann Ghias, although their limitations are clear. They always struck me though as very cool, unique, and stylish ‘around-town’ transportation.
The heater episode reminded me of the 1969 VW bus I had for a few years in the mid-1970’s. Around town you could indeed just wear sweaters, but on winter road trips there was no number of wool socks (even at a young age) that could keep your feet from freezing with nothing but a thin metal panel in front of them.
Now I know the backstory of the Corgi Lions of Longleat set in late 1960’s that I had!
I had one of similar vintage, same color that I owned in the early nineties. It had been wrecked and rebuilt. Luckily, I lived in southern California, so horrific weather was not a problem. I owned a lot of beaters in those days, but it was by far the worst. What a gorgeous little thing it was. I sold it to an aquaintance who still owes me two hundred bucks that I didn’t have the heart to collect. It burned by the side of the road.
Relatable story about the heater cables. I bought a new 1970 Beetle that went through the process a couple of times. When the cables quit it was always “full open” during summer and the opposite during winter months. And if you owned and drove a Beetle in a snowy, salted road environment for many years, it was certain the underseat battery in the rear would start to fall though the rusty undercarriage.
I bought my 1970 Ghia new in Missouri while I was in the Navy and just received orders to Naples Italy. I loved the car and my 3 years there and have always regretted selling it before returning home.
Unique and stylish they were .
Having a smaller passenger cabin that was less well vented in Summer and less heated in Winter was an unforgivable sin to me, a VW Mechanic .
I bought a ’66 and rebuilt it, made a few upgrades (1300C.C. twin port engine) and happily sold it on to Japanese importer, I hope it’s still having a good and pampered life some where in Japan .
-Nate
Thank you for your lovely writing Waswas. As a native of central Vermont, an appreciation of the great traction of VW’s in the 60’s and 70’s was widespread. Also, their light weight and almost universal manual transmission made the bump start much easier to accomplish. Only those who had to ride in them after the heater boxes had rusted out knew their single greatest winter drawback.
For me, the best way to remember something is to write it. Speaking is also useful, but writing does hold the hope that the document will be retained, even if chance plays its part. I imagine desire etched the directions deeply into your mind, in your quest to see your “future wife and future daughter”…
We lived in NW Vermont 2 separate times (’65-’69 and ’75-’82); indeed VWs were popular up there; my Dad’s first “2nd” car was a ’59 Beetle. He replaced it with a new ’68 Renault R10 which other than being watercooled was rear engine and drive and good in the snow with standard Michelin radial tires. He later had a new ’76 Subaru DL (back then they were mostly FWD, only one model was a 4WD station wagon). SAABs were likewise popular, but a bit higher priced, so we never got one . We still moved around a lot back then, though it’s been awhile since I’ve been there (live 1900 miles away) my niece still lives there.
I realize I have zero Karman Ghia experience other than seeing them (our neighbor’s daughter had one back in the day) but I didn’t realize they had a back seat…however small…I guess I assumed with the sharp rake of the back window that they were 2 seaters, but I learned today that they were not…even though I’m not sure who would be comfortable back there unless they were really short.
Oops, the first sentence should read “Thank you for your lovely writing Thiswas”. My apologies for the error.