The Pride of Pumas
“Yearly output fell from thousands to just hundreds until, in 1984, the company managed to churn out a meagre 33 cars”
The ease with which you can pull a Volkswagen body off its chassis and replace it with something, well, a little less Bug- or box-shaped has meant that people and companies have been creating sportier VW variants almost since VWs were born. Within a year of the Type 1’s official launch in May 1938, Ferdinand Porsche had knocked together the Type 64 Rekordwagen, an unadulterated Beetle-based sports car intended for the 1939 Berlin to Rome race (had not WW2 inconveniently got in the way). Postwar, the first Porsche 356s drew heavily on VW underpinnings. Then there was Karmann, Hebmüller, Dannenhauer & Strauss, Rometsch, Beutler, Chesil… all firms that had their own takes on the air-cooled VW platform. Beyond them, there were all the individuals who finely-crafted (or, quite often, otherwise) their own bodies to mate with the Beetle chassis. The versatility of the VW undercarriage gave it a lot of potential, even if the limitations of the Wolfsburg mechanicals
