A few years ago a rather nice beige Karmann Ghia pulled up outside our Burgess Hill showroom. But it wasn’t any old Ghia, it was reputedly the ‘oldest’ in existence and the owner had traveled from German to pay us a visit….

With our curiosity duly aroused, we discovered the Karmann Ghia Lowlight Registry which has a wealth of information about the slinky ‘Lowlight’ models (before the headlamps were relocated to a higher position) and ‘our’ car – built on October 13, 1955 – was indeed listed.

Checking through the entries there seems to be one or two older examples, with the earliest survivor being a car built on August 22, 1955 – but our customer’s car is undoubtedly the most gorgeous and most roadworthy!

The very earliest KGs were identifiable by their delicate two instead of three bar fresh air grilles, the change occurring in 1960. Ditto the rear lights, which were tiny art-deco works of art prior to being made bigger in 1960. Most notably, the downward swooping front wings to give the model its ‘lowlight’  location was also changed in that year.

The only other exterior difference for eagle eyed nit-pickers was a wider lower A-post section, made narrower in 1960 as the front arch profile was altered.

Without trawling the database, we’re not sure who owns the oldest surviving UK Ghia – but if you’re out there, we’d sure like to find out…

Ian