Drag Race Karmann Ghia

You may remember seeing a metallic copper/orange-coloured lowlight Ghia on BRMs in the fire-up lanes at Santa Pod a few years ago. Like us, you may also remember thinking how hard the car looked, with its wicked, nose-down stance and no bumpers. But before any purists throw up their hands about the use of a lowlight Ghia as a racecar, we should let Peter explain how it came about. "I wanted to build a Ghia racecar and so got in touch with Michael Leche at Machine 7. He found me one, but it was a '73 and just not quite what I was after. So I called up BFY (www.bfyobsoleteparts.com) in Orange, California. The guy I spoke to said he had just what I was looking for, a lowlight... It was $500, so I bought it." It was an immense act of bravery to buy what was little more than a shell on a rolling pan and shipping it back to Scotland from California. What's more, it certainly wasn't quite the quick racecar project he had hoped for, but he was undeterred. "Once I'd got the shell here and realised exactly what I'd got, I soon found out how rare these cars really are," he recalls. But thanks to Java and Karmann Konnection he was able to start piecing the car back together. For the full story on Peter's Ghia check out the December 2007 issue of VolksWorld magazine. On sale on 2nd November to 30th November and then available through back issues.