California Central Coast 1500 Ghia sighting

Ivan Pang sent me these pictures of a '63 1500 Ghia he encountered on the road near San Luis Obispo—in May 1975. It must have had a rough life, as it's looking a little the worse for wear for a car that was only 12 years old at the time. I wonder if it's still around today?





One thing a really like about these photos is the fact that more than half of the cars in the background are aircooled—either VWs or Porsches. That's just they way it was in California back then. If you'd like to help increase the aircooled population of San Luis Obispo in 2011, you should consider joining the Type 3/Type 34 50th Anniversary Central Coast Cruise this fall. Details are being finalized now, so it's time to start planning.

The Loved One

Ivan Pang sent me these great 1976 photos of his anthracite '62 1500 notchback at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Forest Lawn (a.k.a. "Whispering Glades" to fans of The Loved One) does a pretty good job of standing in for the old country.





Ivan has been a part of the vintage VW scene in Southern California since the early days, and he has also made it his practice to photograph interesting cars he has seen in Los Angeles' east side neighborhoods over the years. He has owned this particular low-mileage notchback since the mid-1970s. Other than the vintage Porsche 356 wheels and hubcaps (shod with what appear to be Michelin ZX radials) the car is unmodified from original. Ivan still has the original VW wheels and hubcaps in storage. He says the seats have been protected by factory accessory seat covers since the car was new, so the upholstery is in perfect condition. I asked about the clear taillight lenses and he says they were that way when he bought the car.



Here's Ivan at the wheel on a road trip to San Francisco back in the day. The notchback has been in long-term storage for many years and has seen very few miles since these photos were shot 35 years ago. I hope it sees daylight again this year for the 50th anniversary of the VW 1500!

Karmann-Post No. 20, July-September 1961

The cover of issue number 20 of Karmann's promotional magazine featured a 1500 Ghia cabriolet prototype on display at the 1961 Frankfurt auto show (IAA). Other photos of the new 1500s were featured inside.



Mr. and Mrs. Wilhelm Karmann and Ghia's Luigi Segre with the cabriolet at the IAA.



Also at the IAA, the 1500 Ghia cabriolet is shown to German President Heinrich Lübke.



The issue also includes a spread featuring press photos of the new Karmann 1500s. The 1500 Cabriolet is referred to as the "four-seater" and the 1500 Ghia as the "two-seater." That's refreshingly honest — apparently Karmann didn't consider the 1500 Ghia's back seat a realistic place for anyone to sit.

It's an unusually wet winter for Southern California

You swingaxle drivers take it easy out there.



[1500S pushing the limit at Oulton Park, Cheshire, England in the 1960s. Source unknown.]

The Gelb Aktion in action

Last year I wrote a short post about a rare 1961 brochure published for VW dealers that explained the many components of the Volkswagen + VW 1500 advertising campaign, titled Wir werben für den VW 1500 (We advertise the VW 1500). It's a fascinating look from a dealer's point of view at the many tools that were available for publicizing the new 1500: posters in many sizes and formats, banners, freestanding signs, projection slides, print advertising, postal advertising, sales brochures, and window stickers. Here are some photos showing how these campaign components were actually put into use by individual dealers, as seen in VW Informationen, VW's internal publication for dealers and distributors.






On the right side of the photo above you can see a poster for the 1961 Frankfurt international auto show, where the VW 1500 made its public debut. This dates the photo to September 1961.




This dealer raised the bar by combining campaign components with additional graphics in a futuristic space frame advertising structure.



And here the dealer's name has been spelled out on the side of the building using campaign posters. Too bad the photo isn't in color!







All in all, an effective demonstration of what today we would call "branding." The bright yellow color, sans-serif typography, and high-contrast imagery made a very bold visual statement. The complex simplicity and flexibility of the system conveyed a unified and consistent message no matter what location or medium. Modern publicity for a modern automobile.



[thanks to Johannes for sending some of the dealership photos above]

Los Angeles has always been Type 3 friendly

While I'm waiting for my new Optima battery to arrive here's a photo Ivan Pang sent to me of a faded gulf blue '63 VW 1500 notchback parked in a garage a few houses away from where I live...in 1976.



It's good reference for the kinds of features a daily-driven VW 1500 would have had in Los Angeles back in the day: solid red rear lenses, bias-ply thin whitewalls, curb feelers, AAA sticker on the bumper, etc. The license plate's number sequence points to an original registration date of around 1965, so it may have been a gray-market car. It looks worn but all original, which is no surprise because it was only 13 years old! No telling whatever became of the car; it was long gone by the time we moved to the neighborhood 20 years later.

Ivan has lived in the area for many years and he has always tried to photograph old VWs when he sees them. He has been a part of the California vintage VW scene from its beginnings in the early 1970s and has owned lots of interesting old VWs over the years, among them a Rometsch Beeskow cabriolet. He still has a number of them, including a low-mileage '62 notchback.

1961 VW 1500 Cabriolet factory photo

Have a great holiday and new year!

[from the February 1968 issue of Gute Fahrt magazine]

VW 1500s in Auto-Universum, 1964

A 1500N, a 1500S, and a 1500S Variant sunroof from the 1964 edition of Auto-Universum, a.k.a. International Auto Parade.

Ghia on the street, San Francisco, July 1967

Here's a photo of an early '60s Karmann-Ghia (polar blue?) parked on a Haight-Ashbury street in the summer of 1967, found in a box of old vacation slides from a thrift store. It was common practice at the time for tourists in San Francisco to go to the Haight and take pictures of this new and exotic tribe known as the hippies.



One of the subjects registers his disapproval with a one-finger salute.

VW 1500 at the Pacific National Exposition, Vancouver, c. 1964

A VW 1500 S opens wide and says "aaaaahhh" at the Pacific National Exposition in Vancouver.

Innsbruck, Austria, June 1967

A VW 1500 makes its way down an Innsbruck street in the summer of 1967.

Hollywood Freeway, 1962

A postcard showing the Hollywood Freeway looking north toward Hollywood from the Rosemont Avenue overpass, just north of downtown Los Angeles, on a nice day in 1962. The location is very close to where I live and it looks almost the same today except for the cars. There are a few European imports mixed in with all the American cars — a Volvo P444, an Alfa Giulietta Spider, a Mercedes Ponton and a VW 1200 – and a couple of Detroit compacts – the Big Three's attempt to reckon with the success of the foreign newcomers – but not a Japanese car to be seen. That would begin to change a few years later. As with the Sunset Boulevard photo I posted recently, the goal of my Ghia's restoration will be for it to look like it could be dropped right into this scene.

A VW on the Sunset Strip, March 1962

A panorama of the Sunset Strip from the corner of Sunset Plaza in early 1962 (click the image for a version you can actually see) with a mix of Detroit iron and European imports that was typical for Southern California at the time. The VW near the center, a black 1958-61 model, sports the yellow and black California license plates that would be discontinued that year, as do all the other cars that surround it. The Playboy Building is about to join the lineup of legendary jazz clubs on the south side of the street at the right, and billboards advertise Andy Williams at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas and a high-desert real estate swindle closer to home. Below the Andy Williams billboard is Ben Frank's, a Googie-style coffee shop that Frank Zappa used to frequent in the mid-'60s because they didn't turn away long-haired countercultural types. It's still there, but it has now become "Mel's Drive-In" in the peculiar way that authentic landmarks sometimes get replaced by the film industry's idealized version of themselves in Los Angeles. The Union 76 and Standard stations look like something straight out of Ed Ruscha's Twentysix Gasoline Stations.



The goal in the restoration of my Ghia is to make it look like it could be dropped right into this image.

VW 1500 Ghia on a London street, March 1962

An early 1500 Ghia with German plates parked on a London street. The date "March 1962" and "Volkswagen 1500cc Karmann Ghia Coupé" are written on the back of each print.






This car is unusual in that it's a solid color instead of the standard two-tone, and it's accessorized with a radio and whitewall tires. I guess a standard issue 1500 Ghia just wasn't special enough.

Four Cylinder Club, Glendale, California, 1956

Thanks once again to Charles Phoenix, who sent in these slides of a 1956 car show held by the Four Cylinder Club at the Grand Central Air Terminal in Glendale, California. The Four Cylinder Club was based in Glendale but had chapters all across the U.S. It was a general foreign and sports car club that, despite its name, didn't limit membership to owners of 4-cylinder cars, as some of the following photos will show.


Here's a proud owner polishing his brand-new pelican red and black 1956 Karmann-Ghia. It's so clean it's hard to believe it just made the trip from New Mexico. Karmann-Ghia production began in late 1955, so they were a pretty rare sight in the U.S. in 1956.


Next to the Ghia is a Simca Coupé-de-Ville, a Facel-bodied special based on the Simca Aronde. The better known convertible version was called the Weekend, a car I'd like to think Jean-Luc Godard was familiar with. Apparently some sports car owners felt the need to dress sporty too.


Next, after an Austin-Healey 100, is a beautiful Mercedes-Benz 300S Roadster, one of just a handful built between 1952 and 1954.


And then, after a few Jaguar XK140s, there's a 1935 Packard Convertible Coupe (definitely more than four cylinders there), complete with a family dressed in 1930s style, and an impossibly clean MG TD.



Yet another departure from the subject of VW 1500s, but these photos are just too cool not to post.

"How many Volkswagen models are there?," 1965

I ran across this VW factory photo in a 1966 copy of the Swiss graphic design magazine Graphis.



The cars shown are 1965 models, though I didn't know you could still buy a Beetle with a canvas sunroof in 1965. Maybe it's what you got if you ordered a sunroof on the non-export version.

The ultimate VW garage, c. 1963

[From The Samba, via a post on Aircult Blog, found while idly browsing flickr.]

Europa Motor Car Co., North Hollywood, c. 1964

This postcard from Europa Motor Car Company, a VW/Porsche dealer in North Hollywood, California, is another example of VW 1500 gray marketry in 1960s Los Angeles. If you look beyond the new Porsche 356s in the main window you'll see a lineup of used cars (see below) that includes a pearl white 1500 Karmann-Ghia (under the VW sign) and at least two other VW 1500s, none of which were offered to the US market by Volkswagen of America. These were more than likely "used" cars with only a few miles on the odometer.




The gray market: another reason so many early VW 1500s ended up in Southern California, where they were never available from authorized dealers. [wink]