According to him its a type 3, so with my curiosity piqued, I had to see the car.
The next day I took a drive out to see the car and this is what was found
According to magazine clippings he showed me, Karmann proposed a convertible of the T3 Ghia and VW was keen enough that they even started producing brochures.
(Copies he sent me of the printed matter would not load on Photobucket)
Unfortunately, the project was stillborn.
This particular car was ordered from Wolfsburg by the then German Consul in Pretoria. From the assembly line the car went straight to a German coachbuilder in Wolfsburg, to have the conversion done, before being shipped out to South Africa.
The car has all the trim as shown in the sales brochure, with all the fancy aluminium beadings on the rear cover. This would make me suspect that the couchbuilder might even be Karmann. According to unsubstantiated rumours, they built a run of 13 vehicles.
He plans to complete the restoration (eventually). But what really tickled my fancy was that he had all the trim, and this is definitely not a backyard hackjob.
!
. For the very simple reason that VW scrapped or turned down the Karmann prototype because of structural strength, and Karmann was (is) the coach builder who built (builds) ALL of VWs convertibles, Beetles, Golfs, T14 (ok, that's a KG, but still). Not 100% sure about the New Beetle... but then who cares. Karmann are the expert convertible builders, not VW Wolfsburg.