Car Throttle

Last we heard about Karmann, the rumor was that Volkswagen was saving them by giving them an electric vehicle contract worth $14 million. The word is now that VW is indeed saving the company, but by purchasing them outright. VW's supervisory board has approved the purchase of the plant, land and equipment belonging to Wilhelm Karmann GmbH in Osnabrueck, Germany. A new model, yet to be announced, is set to be produced at the site starting in 2011.

VW eventually plans to employ over 1,000 people at the site by 2014. The company is in final negotiations with Karmann shareholders regarding the deal. It certainly is a nice turn of events. VW and Karmann have had a long history together, with the most famous vehicle

Two iconic names have been saved over the past few days - Karmann and Viper. While rumors about it's death have been flying around for quite sometime, German coachbuilder Karmann seemingly made it final with a recent announcement. The Straits Times reported Karmann as saying: "Today, the last car built entirely by Karmann rolled off the assembly line." That last vehicle was the Mercedes-Benz CLK, which has been discontinued in favor of the Mercedes-Benz E-Class coupe.

Karmann is probably best known to everyone by the Karmann Ghia, a VW-based vehicle that proved to be a smashing success for the company. It topped the American imported charts around introduction and 443,482 copies of the car were produced from between 1955 and 1974. Quite a production run! In addition, VW manufactured