VW Saves Karmann!

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 the VW Beetle Cabriolet. So to say there's a strong connection between the two companies would be an understatement. Of course, Karmann has produced vehicles for a wide variety of other manufacturers (to the tune of 3 million total vehicles built), but the connection with VW is the strongest and best known.

That's why it's interesting that VW is potentially saving the company with an electric-car deal worth $14 million. Karmann has helped VW with electric car concepts in the recent past and has recently shown off a new vehicle called the E3.

Given that electric car technology is a key part of VW's future, they might be trying to secure Karmann's expertise in the area. Who knows? But, I think this a pretty neat story if true. For now it's just a report out of Germany'sNeue Osnabruecker Zeitung. I suspect we'll be hearing an official word soon.

Sponsor: karmann ghia