Aircooled VW South Africa

Since 1973 only a couple of hundred Pumas were built in South Africa. To my knowledge it must be in the region of 300 to 350. Due to various factors and elements many of these Pumas have died along the way and only a few survive. I do not think of myself as a Puma guru and will therefore request the real gurus out there to please add any info / history you have on Pumas to this thread. Furthermore the purpose of this thread is to add your Puma to the list so that we can begin to track and see how many Pumas are still alive. Please post a pic of the car, give us some detail on the car and if possible list the production number of the car.

I start this thread by posting some of the original newspaper articels that was used to launch the Puma

OK so here goes....

My Puma is a 1973 model Puma still in it's original colour. The original 13" wedding cake" rims are also standard on the 1973 model. In the early 1990's Armand (IMPI) restored this vehicle post a serious accidents to it's former glory. It was later sold to his uncle and three years ago Armand repurchased the blue car. After about a year of begging I was number three in line to purcase the car and after number 1 and 2 declined, I had the opportunity to purchase the vehicle in July 2009. Since then a complete chassis rebuild has happened as well as some cosmetics like carpets, seat, engine clean-up, etc. The production number of this vehicle is not known as the original plate was lost in the accident and no other production marks are present. Due to various "tell tales" we believe that this car is indeed one of the first 20 that was built.

http://www.aircooledvwsa.co.za/viewtopi ... 8&start=30
My car is number 134
From my experience with puma's I doubt if more than 257 was built as that is the highest body number I have seen.
They built the cars in batches of 5 and when comparing numbers of cars sold at lindsay sakers there is a small date stamp on the Lindsay saker plate which made my car a built in september car and as far as I know the company went bang in 75 supporting my theory

There are a few reasons I classify Herbies car as one of the first 20.
It has Puma marked glass
it has 13" wheels
there is slight differences in body shape to later cars
When I first rebuilt it I found evidence of a oil cooler in the nose which was installed as per Puma Blueprints
I have correspondence from the erstwhile production manager of the factory supporting this.
Regards
Armand

hi my puma is 187.

really like your puma herbie! very nice, I had a look through your posts. looking good

still want to get a puma website up and going, where one can show pics of cars, owners, puma resources etc. all in one place. I had something designed a while ago but time is running away. hopefully towards end of the year it will be up.