Re: The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973
Just a volkswagon?
The premier brand in europe. According to me and |Jeremy Clarkson.
Terril's right, VW is a great brand in Europe and many other places as well. However, it is not a luxury brand and that may explain why Maria said, Just a VW.
The history of the styling of the VW Karmann Ghia is interesting. The styling originated in. of all places, Chrysler Corporation. GM took over #1 in sales from Ford in the late 1920's, then around 1933, Chrysler Corp took over 2nd place from Ford, pushing Ford into 3rd place. Chrysler held down second place for 20 years. Around 1949 all 3 companies brought out all new styling, GM's was the best, Ford was a close 2nd but Chysler styling was too boxy and too conservative; their sales held up for a while but crashed in 1954. Ford retook 2nd place from them in that year and kept it all the way to present time.
In 1954, in reaction to crashing sales, Chrysler brought in ace stylist, Virgil Exner. The first assignment he was given was to design a futuristic show car for each of the Chrysler brands, Plymouth, Dodge, De Soto and Chrysler. The Chrysler brand show car was the best looking of the lot. Chrysler had a contract with an auto company in Italy named Ghia of Italy. When they needed show cars built in small volume, maybe 20 or 25 cars for example, they sub contracted their work to Ghia. Ghia was able to take a car design and fabricate and build a small number of show cars for a very reasonable price, much cheaper than if Chrysler tried to build them in house.
So it was, Virgil Exner of Chrysler Corp who designed a car which was named the "Chrysler Khia d' Elegance". They contracted with Ghia in Italy to build a small number of those cars.
Meanwhile, VW was riding high with the phenomenal success of the VW Beatle. However, that one model was all they built. They wanted a nicer looking car to be designed as a PR move to entice more people to be interested in their brand. They too had a working alliance with Ghia of Italy. They signed a contract for Ghia to design and build a sporty car to spice up the VW brand.
In the course of doing business, VW execs would send execs to Ghia to approve designs or to oversee the quality of design and production. By chance some VW execs were present at the Ghia plant and happened to see early prototypes of the Chrysler Ghia d' Elegance. They flipped out over the design and approached Ghia and said, we love this design, how about building a smaller version of this and redesigning it for a rear engine instead of a front engine.
A deal was cut between VW and Ghia to use the same basic styling of the Chrysler Ghia d' Elegance but with a rear engine instead of a front engine. Since VW wanted thousand of cars built not just 25 or so for shows, Ghia had to chose another company than themselves to actually build the cars and they chose Kharmann to build the cars.
Thus it was that the Chrysler Ghia d' Elegance morphed into the VW Kharmann Ghia - a truly amazing story, no? Check out the similarity of the designs:
The Chrysler Ghia Coupe:
https://www.google.com/search?q=chr...gil=ig9Bckn4uBw7mM%3A%3BHjkCJ5tI2qlc_M%3Bhttp
The VW Kharmann Ghia:
https://www.google.com/search?q=vw+...0eYoqsdM%3A%3BQ0oPjruq2ZEv_M%3Bhttp%253A%252F
Any doubts about where the original design of the VW Kharmann Ghia came from?
There is even a more ironic twist to this story. Where do you think the design for the original VW bug came from? Again, as with the Kharmann Ghia, without any hints, no one would ever guess. Once again it was Chryler Corp. Dr. Ferdinand Porche was sent by Germany to the USA in 1935 to study how cars were built in large numbers in Detroit. While there, Dr. Porche was most impressed by the De Soto Airflow model. He decided to make that the basic styling model for the VW Beetle: Of course the Beetle was much smaller and putting the engine in the back instead of the front required some major redesign but the heritage of the two models can not be denied!
Check it out:
https://www.google.com/search?q=193...dcarandtruckpictures.com%2FAirflow%2F;400;273
For two companies who have not really done many projects together as a team, VW owes both its Beetle design and its Kharmann Ghia design to Chrysler Corporation!
Lakey
