We seem to be keeping an aircooled VW theme going for a bit.  There are many rare aircooled VWs, lots of coachbuilders took the Beetle chassis then built custom bodies on top. familiar names like Hebmuller and Rometsch through to Ascort and Kaiserslautern.  These would some low hanging fruit for a quick rare car feature, one day we may well run through the VW coach built cars, today however we're bringing you something a bit different.

When VW announced the Type 3 line up in 1961 at the Frankfurt IAA it included a rather nice four seater convertible built by Karmann.  Essentially it is the same as the notch back with its roof cut off, because that is exactly what it is.  Anyone that has tried to build a convertible out of a four seater saloon may well spot the immediate problem that this caused for the engineers at Karmann.  When you remove the roof of a saloon you affect its torsional stiffness, not even the skills of Karmann could overcome this issue, at least not cost effectively, so the car never went into formal production.

Just eleven of these cars were produced, although VW printed up brochures for the car and a price of 8,200 Deuschmarks had been set.  Volkswagen have one on display at their Wolfsberg museum, what happened to the other ten I've not been able to find, given their rarity and interest I'd be surprised if there aren't some lurking out there in a private collection somewhere.  Have any of our readers ever seen one in the wild?