The joy of sharing
09/12/2015
Collectors are looking for them, they fetch the highest prices at auctions, the variants with the split rear windows. The Volkswagen Pretzel Beetle, which was built until 1953 with two small rear windows in the shape of half ellipses, is extremely popular. And the Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray, first built in 1963, with the bridge between the two halves of the rear window, achieved the highest quotations.
The Beetle-Bretzel window was created more out of necessity and the fact that larger (and curved) rear windows were considered more practical could be seen in the model development of the following years.
The Corvette rear window was not exactly practical either. This was because there was a significant limitation exactly where the view through the rear-view mirror fell when looking backwards. The split windshield on the Corvette was more a matter of styling than necessity and consequently the idea was abandoned in the second model year in favor of more practical benefits.
However, practical considerations are of little concern to collectors today; uniqueness and rarity are much more important. And since the variants with the split rear windows are among the rarer examples today, they are in correspondingly higher demand. And the fact that they can be so clearly distinguished visually from their descendants also helps, of course. This means that they can be more impractical to use ...
Incidentally, there were countless other cars with split rear windows, even if the Bretzel Beetle and Corvette are still the most famous today ...
