And now all together: Good luck on your 100th birthday!

Paul Krüger
04/30/2023

Der Porsche 963 LMDH in der speziellen Jubiläums-Folierung für 100 Jahre Le Mans und 75 Jahre Porsche

Wrapping modern racing cars in the style of a famous role model from the past is the current trend. At Le Mans four years ago, Ford drove a horde of GTs in the Holman Moody look, while Mercedes-AMG brought a modern "red sow" to the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps two years ago. But what do you do when, as a nineteen-time series winner, you have more style-defining liveries than racing cars on the grid? Right: you simply take them all.

Der Porsche 963 LMDH in der speziellen Jubiläums-Folierung für 100 Jahre Le Mans und 75 Jahre Porsche

And so the Porsche 963 in the version used by the factory for the 100th anniversary of Le Mans is adorned with the red and white of the Salzburg-917, the pink of the Sau, the green and dark blue of the Hippie-917, the orange and light blue of the Gulf-917 and the yellow of the Penske Spyder. Red and blue are also arranged to form the martini stripes of the 936. A dash of beige gold in the right place also ensures that the Rothmans colors of the 962 shine at the rear.

With so many famous signatures on the four-wheeled greetings card, the 24-hour birthday celebration in June can only be a success. The 20th overall Porsche victory would be a fitting gift.

Der Porsche 963 LMDH in der speziellen Jubiläums-Folierung für 100 Jahre Le Mans und 75 Jahre Porsche

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75 years of the VW Beetle in Switzerland

Daniel Reinhard
04/29/2023

Eine LKW-Ladung fabrikneuer VW-Käfer kommt in der Schweiz an, 1963 – © Archiv Reinhard

On April 29, 1948, AMAG signed the import contract for the "Volkswagen". The first 25 VW Beetles rolled into Switzerland from Wolfsburg at the beginning of May and soon rolled across the nation. A success story took its course. However, there was no question of a plague like the spread of the bark beetle. The picture above shows how, 15 years later, tons of Volkswagens were still being delivered from Wolfsburg to Schinznach. By March 1983, a total of exactly 320,637 Beetles had crawled into Switzerland.

It was foreseeable early on that there would be great demand for new cars in Switzerland. And it was equally certain that the VW Beetle was the ideal car for the mountainous country. So fertile ground awaited the Beetle in Switzerland, and its excellent reputation had long preceded it. The development of the design with its air-cooled rear engine, platform frame and streamlined all-steel body had been followed with interest. One advertising slogan was particularly apt and highlighted the advantage of the air-cooled engine in mountainous regions: "Air doesn't boil, air doesn't freeze."

If you look at photos from the 1950s today, you will notice that whether in cities, on mountain passes or on the shores of lakes, there is one car you will see again and again: the Beetle. There are often dozens of Volkswagens on the most beautiful promenades in Switzerland. The visual impression is not deceptive. As early as 1954, VW achieved a market share of 30 percent with just a single model. This figure later rose to as much as 35 percent. The popularity of the Volkswagen becomes all the clearer when you consider that practically every car manufacturer in the world was represented in Switzerland.

Switzerland was an open market at the time, and the brands competed for the favor of buyers with numerous models. Most of these were won by the VW 1200 in its export version with chrome trim and luxurious interior - a model that played a dominant role for over ten years. In 1954, more than 10,000 vehicles were sold in one year for the first time.

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Unlimited with a resident parking permit - Or: Sleeping Beauty drives an Opel

Paul Krüger
04/28/2023

Ein eingewachsener Opel Rekord C im Moseltal bei Lieser

It's been a while since I photographed this permanently parked car in the Moselle valley. Nevertheless, I still occasionally wonder how the white Opel Rekord found its way into the hedge. Simple forgetting is out of the question, as the L47 runs barely a meter away from his passenger door.

It is a beautiful still life with a morbid romanticism, the overgrown C-Record in front of the abandoned country house. Only the modern construction fence disturbs the idyll a little - and it foreshadows bad things to come. The rusty Opel may have long since been razed to the ground along with the venerable brick building.

Or perhaps someone erected the fence to prevent vandals from attacking the house and car. After all, neither looks completely irredeemable. So let's just hope for the best for the two of them. Perhaps they are still there today - or have even been brought back to life.

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Delivery period: 25 years

Daniel Reinhard
04/27/2023

Frontansicht eines Audi TT Roadsters © Daniel Reinhard

In the summer of 1997, the first Audi TT with the internal code 8N was presented at the Interlaken airfield: a convertible in discreet mouse gray and an interior with light brown "moccasin" leather with the look of a baseball glove. I was so enthusiastic about the car that I immediately wanted one. Back then, automotive journalists usually got a few percent press discount (I don't know if this still applies today). However, this did not give you the right of first refusal.

And so my order has probably still been processed by Audi Switzerland for around 25 years. Because despite a clear pre-order with a choice of color and leather and various phone calls, the car still hasn't arrived. A yellow Renault Sport Spider then became the long-awaited fresh-air replacement. Of course, I have since given up hope that the car will suddenly be delivered after a quarter of a century - not least because the "FV", the third generation after the "8J" (2006-2014), is now on sale.

But I also had to wait a while for the Renault because a wind deflector instead of a windshield was initially not permitted in Switzerland and the Sport Spider with the normal glass was not yet on sale. When I finally got the Renault, the wind deflector was suddenly accepted after all. Nevertheless, I was glad to have the windshield. Who wants to have to wear a helmet all the time when driving a convertible?

Frontansicht eines Renault Sport Spider

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The most beautiful swan of all - Do you know the Citroën 2CV Allemano?

Paul Krüger
04/26/2023

Citroën 2CV AZL Coupé mit Spezialkarosserie von Allemano, 1955

There were many attempts to turn Citroën's ugly duckling into a pretty swan: from the rear conversion kit for a two-seater roadster to the completely re-bodied plastic coupé with factory support. But even before the Citroën Bijou rolled off the production line in Slough in 1959 for an Anglo-Saxon 2CV clientele with high aesthetic standards, an idea for an elegant coupé based on the Döschwo was already maturing at a Citroën branch outside France.

At the Belgian headquarters in Forest, where ducks had also been assembled since October 1952, a similar idea was already maturing in 1955. As the Italians were considered to be far more capable coachbuilders than the English, the Belgians turned south for their noble duck, more precisely to the Carrozzeria Allemano in Turin. There they tailored a two-door coupé based on a Citroën 2CV from Forest production, the lines of which were very similar to the Marquis presented in 1954 and the later Alpine A 106.

The front with its simple, oval air intake corresponded to the typical Allemano face of those years. The hood was opened using a push button and a handle above it. As befits an Italian sports coupé from the fifties, the interior of the Spezialente naturally features a Nardi wooden steering wheel. Of particular interest, however, is the radiator grille, which, with the double angle integrated into two trim strips, anticipated a feature of the modern Citroën face, which made its debut in August 2004 with the facelift of the C5.

There is a little uncertainty about the engine. On the net, one reads about the small 375 cubic engine with 9 SAE hp from the 2CV A, which cannot be ruled out. However, if Allemano had received a brand-new chassis from Citroën Belgium, as was customary at the time, it would have been that of the 2CV AZ with the 12 hp engine enlarged to 425 cubic centimeters. Just as interesting as it is unclear is the origin of the hubcaps, which differ slightly from those of the 2CV AZL.

Perhaps a reader here knows more. We would be delighted to receive information on the history and whereabouts of this one-off. Although much prettier than the UMAP 425 SM and other later coupé creations, the Allemano duck did not go into series production.

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Tin and games - car ball in the seventies

Paul Krüger
04/25/2023

VW Käfer beim Autoball in den Siebzigern

It wasn't Stefan Raab who invented this hard-to-control game with the hood. Back in the spring of 1978, a German "national team" competed against a team from Switzerland in the parking lot of the Neckar Stadium in Stuttgart to compete against each other in sheet metal-based ball pushing. Each team consisted of five players and their equipment - an old VW Beetle that had been adapted for its new purpose with just harness belts, harder shock absorbers, a cow catcher and a few old tires as side impact protection.

The initiator of the spectacle and team captain of the Germans was Paul Wittmann, who got the idea from the USA, where car ball games have allegedly been held since 1965. But the "ex-high-wire artist, ex-showman and ex-hell driver" was off the mark by a good 30 years and up to 9500 kilometers. Because the first recorded car ball game in history took place in Karlruhe in 1933. As a one-on-one (Mercedes-Benz versus Opel), it was effectively a modernized version of the pistol duel.

However, Wittmann did not yet achieve the breakthrough he had hoped for. It took another 29 years, the introduction of private television and a trained butcher before Autoball became reasonably popular. The invention of the airbag probably didn't help either. As auto motor und sport wrote about the international match in the 1970s: "In car soccer, broken bones, bruises and cuts are an integral part of the spectacle." And that wasn't referring to the cars...

VW Käfer beim Autoball in den Siebzigern

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First belt up, then take off (question of the week)

Paul Krüger
04/24/2023

Frage der Woche 233

We've probably never had so many zeros. Four of the seven possible answers in our last "Question of the Week" received less than one percent of the 473 votes and therefore had a zero in front of the decimal point. Two of them even had no supporters at all. Well then. What did we expect? Anyone who values active driver assistance systems is certainly not driving a classic car - and the reverse conclusion is obvious. The vast majority of classic car drivers can even do without ABS and airbags

According to our readers, the most important (and, judging by the clear survey results, probably the only important) safety equipment in classic cars is the seatbelt, whether static or automatic. Almost half of those surveyed (45.5 percent) do not want to do without the protective textile belt. This is followed by 39.5 percent of those who can do without all passive safety features and who believe that seat belts offer the best protection for attention at the wheel.

Frage der Woche 233

Third place once again goes to the joker: 14.2 percent of readers do not feel well represented by any of the given answer options. And that is to some extent our fault. Because we completely forgot one safety feature that is very frequently found in classic cars and which was recommended to us in a reader's letter as one of the first retrofits: the headrest. Or was the roll bar even missing?

Whether with a supported head, a fixed torso or simply with an alert gaze: Take a trip to the petrol station and tell us what you put in your (favorite) classic car. In the increasingly confusing range of fuel types and blends, we are interested in which of them are relevant for classic cars: in our new "Question of the Week".

As usual, you can read the results of previous "Questions of the Week" in our topic channel.

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Play me the song of death

Daniel Reinhard
04/23/2023

On February 17, 1972, the 15,007,034th VWBeetle rolled off the production line in Wolfsburg, beating the previous production record of the legendary Ford T.

Not all vehicles survived, some were involved in accidents, others were stranded on the roadside in Detroit just two years after the end of production (1983), while others were slowly but surely unable to escape their slow decay.

Many, however, have survived to this day, some have even been meticulously restored and are now increasing in value every year.

I don't think any other car will ever be able to match the success of the Beetle, not even the Golf, as its old basic shape changes much more from model to model in today's very fast-moving world.

The Beetle always remained a Beetle. Round and very simple in its design, that's how it appealed to people as a Volkswagen. Even back then, one characteristic clearly set it apart from many of its competitors: It runs and runs and runs and runs ...

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The VW Golf is THE classic car

Bruno von Rotz
04/22/2023

If you ask people to list typical classic cars, they usually mention Porsche 356, Mercedes-Benz /8, Mercedes-Benz Pagoda (W113, 230 to 280 SL) or perhaps the VW Beetle.

But if you take a closer look at the statistics, in this case the registration figures for cars over 30 years old in Germany (analyzed by BBE Automotive), then things look a little different. At the top of the list is the VW Golf with 90,638 roadworthy cars. In second place comes the Mercedes-Benz E-Class (primarily the W123 and W124), followed by the VW Bus (various generations) and finally the VW Beetle and the BMW 3-series.

Of course, three generations of the Golf are represented, as the Golf III was already available in 1993. The fact that only 27% of these Golfs have an H license plate probably indicates that there are also many unkempt used cars among them.

The table also shows other anomalies. For example, more (Sachsenring) Trabants are registered in Germany today than at least 30-year-old Porsche 911s, while the VW Polo, Citroën 2 CV and Opel Kadett also make it into the top 15.

Some classic car enthusiasts still see a VW Golf as a youngtimer rather than a "real" classic car, but the first Golfs will soon be 50 years old, as is already the case with the Passat.

Many more interesting statistics can be found in the large-scale classic car study by BBE Automotive.

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Seat occupancy detection of a different kind

Paul Krüger
04/21/2023

"Fünfundneunzig Oberweite. Wie heisst sie?"

The nice thing about cartoons and one-panel comics is that you don't have to write much about them. That's why I'm not going to do that now. In any case, the unfaithful E-type driver will have learned his lesson. And we now finally know the real reason why automatic seat belts have prevailed.

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