The round, Chrysler-inspired, 1950s-era regular Volkswagen Karmann Ghia is a familiar sight in the USA, but there were actually three different Karmann Ghias in all. The original recipe Type 14, the 1970s-era Brazilian Type 145 “Touring Coupe” (which looked like a blend of Pietro Frua’s Glas/BMW GT and a Porsche 911), and the most unusual of all: Italian designer Sergio Sartorelli’s Type 34 Karmann Ghia that you see here.

We’d presented Type 34s before on our old social media pages, but this one we encountered in the spring of 2023 was the first we’ve ever seen in a junkyard, let alone an American Junkyard. Given how uncommon these are even in Germany, it’s definitely an unusual sight.

The Type 34, sometimes called the “big Ghia,” was based on the Type 3 and appeared around the same time at the 1961 Frankfurt show. It was never sold in the U.S., but a few trickled in over the years. Cars were easier to import in the 1960s and 1970s, and many American VW-philes wanted something a little different. The same phenomenon happened with the Type 3 Notchback, also never a U.S. model (though both could be had in Canada on a limited basis).

The original-recipe Ghia, introduced in 1954, was famously humble underneath, essentially a Beetle in a party dress. The Type 34, which was larger, faster, and far more expensive, was new territory for VW, even stretching beyond the other members of the “grown up” Type 3 family, which was intended to take VW beyond the Beetle and its bargain-bin image.

Sergio Sartorelli

The design was done at Ghia, as with the other cars that bore the name, but this time by designer Sergio Sartorelli, who would later go on to head Fiat Centro Stile, with some help from Tom Tjaarda, another young designer who would soon migrate to Pininfarina.

Born in 1928, Sartorelli was always fascinated with cars and trained as an engineer at Turin Polytechnic before working for Felice Mario Boano and later Luigi Segre at Ghia starting in 1956. He also briefly worked drawing truck illustrations for ads and catalogs. Life at Ghia was a dream come true for him, and he was soon involved in many projects, mostly for Fiat and VW, as well as creating custom Chryslers for Saudi Arabian Sheikhs. Two of his earliest production projects were the Fiat 500 Jolly and the Type 34, the prototype of which was done in early 1960.

The Type 34 reflected the influence of a few other Ghia projects, but generally speaking, it stood alone in its proportions and overall shape. There’s a little Corvair influence, but it does not resemble many of Sartorelli’s other designs of the period or those of Tjaarda or Frua, who was also at Ghia then. Some of the influence of the forward-control 1959 Ghia Selene I concept can be seen, but that vehicle came out looking very different.

The Type 34 Karmann Ghia

Originally, there were to be two versions of this new Volkswagen, a coupe and a cabriolet. The droptop was not only shown to the public but got as far as the brochure stage before it was nixed. The labor needed to make it work from a production standpoint was significant, and Karmann found they could not build it at a cost that anyone would be willing to pay. Even the Type 34 coupe was to be a very expensive car, which wound up limiting its sales.

Underneath it was essentially a Type 3 1500, VW’s first foray into cars larger than the Beetle. The Type 34 was stretched about 5.5 inches (14cm) from the regular 1500, and looked far lower and wider thanks to the unusual styling. Built partly by hand at Karmann, the complex shell weighed about 200 lbs. more than the regular Type 3 notchback.

Despite the extra weight, the 53-horse 1500 engine gave it a much greater turn of speed than the regular Ghia, even if it wasn’t a fast car overall. It was also a much more luxurious machine than any previous VW, and that was part of the point. Volkswagen hoped that buyers would view the car as a move upscale, towards an even playing field with fancier Opels or low-end Benzes.

That didn’t happen, but it was a very unique product. It was the most expensive thing in Volkswagen’s showrooms other than the fully-specced Westfalia Camper and had lots of standard features that weren’t common on the other Volkswagens, a clock, a vanity mirror, even an optional power sunroof, definitely more Wagen and less Volks. The rakish bodywork looked like nothing else from VW or many other automakers, and without the badges it would be hard to tell its humble origins.

Though not often mistaken for an actual luxury car, it targeted the same buyers of upscale European proto-personal/luxury coupes that the departed Borgward Isabella coupe had. It wasn’t fast enough to be a sports car, so it sold on style and frills. The high price, however, meant it was never a very popular car. Just over 42,000 were made from 1962 to 1969.

In 1967, the Type 34 got the mechanical updates of the rest of the Type 3 range including the new 66-horsepower 1600 engine, which gave it a little more fire to match the flash.

Whatever Happened to the Type 34?

The modest production numbers presaged a very tiny number of survivors. A complex body with lots of sculpting and many different welds, the Type 34 proved to be a prolific ruster, and since all the panels were unique to what Germans called “Der Große Karmann,” repair was not an easy or cheap task. The complexity of fixing corrosion on these cars sent many of them to a premature date with the crusher.

When the end came, the Type 34 was replaced by something as different as it was familiar: the VW-Porsche 914, which bowed for the 1969 model year and, while equally angular and rakish, put much more emphasis on speed and handling than on style.

By then, Sartorelli had moved on to OSI following Ghia’s difficulties after Ing. Segre’s death, but not before styling some pretty great Ghia jams like the Fiat 2300S and Ghia’s own 1500GT (which led to Frua’s Glas/BMW coupe).

So what happened to its creators? OSI was eventually absorbed into Fiat, where Sartorelli went on to direct advance design and styled the Fiat Ritmo/Strada in the mid-1970s. Tjaarda, famously the creator of the Fiat 124 Spider and DeTomaso Pantera among other cars, styled only some of the rear details on the Type 34 Karmann Ghia, and moved to Pininfarina shortly before the Type 34 was first shown.

This old Type 34 went off the road around the time Sartorelli’s Ritmo was wowing the European Car of the Year jury in 1978, and it’s been at Georgia’s Old Car City ever since