'63 Karmann Ghia

Visitors to last year's VolksWorld show will no doubt remember Stephané Dendievel's gorgeous Polar Silver Ghia Convertible, which secured one of the prestigious spaces on the VolksWorld stand thanks to an all-round package of drop dead good looks, rare period parts and performance to back it all up. Like all Ghias, the car's beauty is certainly skin deep but often that means people choose not to look further to see what's beneath the pretty façade, preferring to just enjoy them from a distance. How many of you that saw this car, for example, realised it had a Gene Berg 5-speed conversion and a stonking 2332cc motor in the back? We'll admit we didn't to begin with but, as the language barrier between French-speaking Stephané and ourselves meant lots of pointing and appreciative nods, so he directed us to some of the more subtle modifications that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Now you might be thinking that someone that drives a silver Karmann Ghia Cabriolet might be more concerned with looks than performance, but Stephané has always seen both as going hand in hand. Right from an early age, he was into performance VWs, but not the kind we're more used to here at VolksWorld. He started his foray into VW's finest some quarter of a century ago as a fresh-faced teenager with a Mk1 Golf - not just any old Golf either, but an 1800cc GTi model that he then had turbocharged by DR Tuning in Belgium. He followed that up with one of the factory supercharged Mk2 Rallye Golfs, but one whose engine had been swapped for the turbocharged unit from an Audi S3, together with its six-speed gearbox. It's clear then that he's not the kind of guy who's prepared to sit behind the milk float on the way into work!
After a few years of driving water-cooled VWs, Stephané felt the draw of the air-cooled side of the VW scene and lost his cherry to a '72 Karmann Cabriolet, followed soon after by a '69 version, then soon after that by a variation on the theme - this US-spec '63 Karmann Ghia Cabriolet. To begin with, he simply added a set of 17-inch Fuchs and gave the car a mild lowering job, but after driving it for a while decided that it really deserved a powertrain more akin to the cars he'd been used to driving.

For the full story on this car make sure you pick up a copy of the April 2009 issue of VolksWorld 

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