I’m not sure if you’ve ever daydreamed about being some kind of bigwig at a carmaker or not, but if you haven’t, you should parcel out maybe a half hour or so today to do just that. And when you do, I suggest that you add one very important detail into your reverie: you should have a prototype as your daily driver.
Yes, you heard me: a prototype! To drive, every day! Frankly, I don’t know why we don’t see more modern auto executives doing this today, because what better way to telegraph what a vast and unfathomable badass you are than by driving something completely unobtainable to the rest of the world.
I mention this because I recently found out that one of my favorite stillborn prototypes, the Volkswagen Type 3 Notchback cabriolet, was actually used as a daily driver by Johannes Beeskow, who was manager of the technical research department at Karmann, the coachbuilding firm VW used to engineer and build all of their convertibles and their sporty cars like the Karmann-Ghia.
Beeskow was an interesting guy – he had been a designer since the 1930s, and ended up at Rometsch after the war. He designed the first four-door VW Beetle variant in 1950, which was used for taxis, and before that convinced Rometsch that they should use the VW platform to make a sports car, which they did, and named it for Beeskow.
The Rometsch Beeskow was a very pretty little car, and was part of a nascent industry to make some more fun cars based on VW mechanicals, a group that included Porsche with their 356, though Porsche, of course, soon took this concept far beyond just a VW-based machine.
It’s also worth noting that those “awnings” over the front fenders seem to have found their way onto the Mercedes-Benz 300SL in 1954.
VW stopped selling Rometsch Beetle chassis and then even entire Beetles because in 1955 VW realized there was a market for a sportier car, and began to sell the Karmann-Ghia.
Eventually and maybe a little ironically, Beeskow ended up at Karmann, and when the larger, more up-market companion to the Beetle, the VW Type 3 (called the VW 1500), was introduced in 1961, the plan was that the line of cars would include a convertible.
Development of the cabriolet Type 3 got far enough along that brochures were printed:
It’s a pretty straightforward adaptation of the Type 3 notchback into a drop-top, and I think it’s quite handsome.
What a charming and tidy little convertible, right? Like all Type 3s, this had a trunk at the front and the rear, though in the brochure they only show the rear open, because I guess for a VW, everyone already expected to have a trunk up front?
The top, like all Karmann-built convertible tops, was fantastic, with layers of insulation and a real glass rear window. It looks so smooth and clean when it’s raised, too:
I’m not really sure why VW decided against putting the Type 3 cabriolet into production; maybe they thought the Beetle and Karmann-Ghia convertibles filled that niche well enough?
Whatever the reason, the cabriolet never made it to production, with just two prototypes made. And one of those, the whole reason I’m writing this as I mentioned before, was used by Beeskow as his daily driver, from 1961 to 1969.
Apparently, it drove great, as it was mostly just a Type 3 notchback, and didn’t feel unfinished like many prototypes would. This car was found a few years back, and Volkswagen had it restored to an incredibly high degree, looking just like it did 64 years ago.
I just think I’d never get tired of knowing the car I drove to work every day was a one-of-a-kind experiment, a unicorn among unicorns. I’m delighted to hear Beeskow liked this thing enough to do that, and looking at the pictures, I get it.
It’s a shame that the Type 3 cabriolet never made it to production, but if it had, then Herr Beeskow wouldn’t have felt nearly as cool, and I suspect he’d have missed that.
Let’s not forget Batman essentially drove a prototype! After all the Batmobile was the Lincoln Futura. Customized by George Barris of course. But the basic design is still visible. Don’t even have to squint hard! Lol
It’s a pity these didn’t make it into production. I would think mechanics probably hated the rear trunk on top of the engine. And I don’t think I would have liked whatever I put back there smelling like gasoline as VW fuel lines from that era did have a tendency to wear through their fuel lines and then sometimes catch fire.
And I had forgotten the older “H” steering wheel logo. At least it looks like a castellated H, but I’m not sure what the heritage or meaning is/was.
Wow, what a nice design
It would be glorious to drive prototypes and one offs. But who actually was allowed to do that?
I want one of these, very badly. The Type 3 is my favorite air-cooled VW to start with, this is just perfection.
Pour one out for Karmann, bankrupt in 2010. There’s probably a story there.
The numbers don’t lie
The depictions in the brochure are a bit optimistic. The real car is still handsome, but the rear window isn’t nearly as big. The rear side windows are also way shorter. In turn the rear pillar is significantly chunkier.
It a nice neat little Cabriolet, it might even be faster than a Karmann Ghia. It only makes business sense if VW had discontinued the other models so I understand why it was not produced. Heck, the US didn’t get the Type 3 Karmann Ghia, and only a few notchbacks
Harley Earl did this while head of the design dept at GM.
I saw one of his cars, the 1938 Buick “Y-Job”, in person a few years back. It was first a show car, but then he daily drove the thing for a few years after. It’s one of the most beautiful cars I’ve ever seen. 1930s-40s cars were generally tall and upright, but this thing was shockingly low and sleek, pics do not do it justice.
Harley and the amazing LeSabre that came after the Y-Job. I highly recommend the biography Fins.
https://www.formtrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/harley-earl_buick-le-sabre-concept_1951_03.jpg
Privilege has its privileges.
I was obsessed with building a type 3 notchback convertible when I was in high school – and until now I had no idea VW had built some!!
At the time I couldn’t find a notchback I could afford, and would have felt bad cutting one up anyway… so I bought a type 3 wagon with the intent of modifying it into a notchback convertible. Sadly, the project vastly exceeded my skills and finances at the time. It was the first in many lessons about the difficulty of turning an automotive vision into an actual automobile.
Don’t know why they didn’t make it, as it looks much better than the Ghia.
Want
Dang, what an utterly lovely car!! What a lucky dog Beeskow was, driving that daily for so many years. It bears a good bit of similarity to the Autobianchi Bianchina cabriolet of the same era albeit being a bit bigger.
Ha, it’d be an extremely niche and perhaps confusing joke for fans of the Autobianchi, fans of the original Pink Panther film, and fans of air-cooled VWs to drive a Type 3 cabriolet in peach while wearing a gorilla suit:
https://imcdb.org/i020722.jpg
I’ve spent a good bit of time around prototype test vehicles. Zero chance I would want to drive one daily.
(Talking about real prototypes here – having your team basically build you a custom car and calling it a prototype with manufacturer plates so you can legally drive it is a completely different story.)
One of my cars was an ex-development car (production built, then modified, assessed and much later sold by the OEM) and most of it was fine. However when it started running really rough I took it to a specialist, and he unearthed a nest of wiring and a second ECU spliced in. We’d never seen anything like it. It took a new loom and ECU to fix that.
Prototypes are a whole level of shonky above that.
That said: Gordon Murray’s F1 was a prototype. And that was deeply cool.
Jason, you said there were two prototypes. Any idea what happened to the other one?
Having owned my dark blue ’67 VW squareback since ’78 and a big fan of Type 3’s this one just tugs at my heart. Seeing this in blue grabs at my heart. Gorgeous. My ’64 truck and Prius are also blue.
So Carlos Ghosn could have just had his wife drive a Murano Carbriolet prototype and saved us all the pain of seeing them on the road? What a monster.
I’d drive the AWD Wankel Corvette.
Hell yeah! I’d drive me a Ford Nucleon ALL DAY, SON. ALL DAY.
I’d have been satisfied with the very possible Chrysler Turbine car. If only to be able to say things like “stand back pal, I’m igniting it.” No doubt smoking a Lucky as I did so.
A friend of mine had a crappy little Mazda 1300 wagon that he had fitted a big stereo to, and he had a sound effects tape that included the startup sequence of a helicopter turbine engine. It became regular practice when he was leaving anywhere to crank the stereo right up and play the turbine startup noises as though the Mazda had a jet turbine installed!
I know designers seek, and tech is enabling, seamlessness, but in this respect, but I’d love more convoluted, visceral start up procedure for vehicles, esp with such noises. I get a small kick out of turning the key, hearing the fuel pump whirr, etc. If only there could be another switch or two to flip ala the Millennium Falcon, I’d be in heaven.
Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!
If I had been Bob Lutz I would have driven the Cadillac Sixteen around *everywhere*.
Get in on the Build It Yourself youtube channel and see if you can drive the prototype 40 valve V10 they built.
followed by the Cien
The rear view drawing with the luggage looks like a dumpy MGB. The car is cute but I can understand that the Karmann Ghia and Beetle convertibles would have the market covered.