The Can-Am style Tatum Special was the ‘70s creation of racing driver/designer come car salesman Chuck Tatum. It’s a pretty wicked looking and about as rare as a really rare thing. Here’s how it came about…

The story goes that Chuck was testing one of his Formula Vee cars when he came up with the idea of taking a Vee chassis and designing a road going car around it – based on Veedub underpinnings. The result would be a light, agile car offering good performance with superb handling but with an affordable pricetag.

Thus the Tatum was born, featuring a ladder type chassis with mild steel 2.5in square tubing, with a substructure providing mounting points for the glassfibre body, fuel tank and steering wheel. Torsional strength was added through four steel crossmembers. The front suspension came courtesy of VW’s late balljoint setup which was lowered and softenened in typical Formula Vee tradition. The top torsion bar was completely deactivated, while the bottom was set by twisting it until the desired tarmac scraping ride height was achieved. At the rear, a Type 3 setup was adopted with Tatum considering it to be lighter and stronger than the Type 1. The necessary chassis control was provided by a pair of Andeck adjustable coil/shock units up front and a set of Bilsteins at the rear.

The steering was stock VW but with stronger tie rods and the response improved with a Pitman arm extender. Stock VW brakes were used but with dual master cylinders and an adjustable yoke to achieve the desired front-to-rear balance.

The engine in the Tatum prototype was a standard 1600cc Beetle unit but being so light, performance was definitely more than adequate.

A neat feature of the body was that the wings could be removed in about 20 minutes with cycle-type mudguards being able to be fitted instead to make it road legal in true hot-rod style.

Said Chuck when asked about his mega ‘70s machine years later: “It was very unique at the time,” adding that he designed it to be two cars in one, or more if you used it as a racecar and took it on the track as well.

A prototype was made and Chuck built another for a customer, but that was it. The price of fibreglass at the time, apparently, made it uneconomic to build any more so calling it a rarity is something of an understatement.

Rumour has it that the yellow prototype that featured on the cover of Hot VWs magazine in 1974 was sold to someone in San Francisco and the kit he built also stayed in California. But whether either have survived to this day is anyone’s guess…

Ian

The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of VW Heritage