VW Thing

ACCIDENTAL BEAUTY?

- Colin Ryan

One day, someone should ask an automobile stylist about the peculiar beauty that results from purely functional designs. Do they see it as accidental, or is it something they might actually want to achieve with their work? For example, the look of the first Range Rover was only meant to be temporary, drawn up by an engineer with the full expectation that a pro designer would subsequently come along and create the “real thing.” The engineer’s lines remained, however, and the Range Rover won a design award.

Oh, to have been in the boardroom when Volkswagen decided to make a Jeep-like vehicle after being approached by the German army to create a light-duty, general-purpose military automobile. The result is this. To Volkswagen, it was known as the Type 181 (versions with right-hand drive were designated Type 182). In other parts of the world, it was called the Camat, the Trekker, or the Safari. In the United States, it was referred to simply as the Thing.

An all-wheel-drive, amphibious automobile—the Europa Jeep—was under development as a joint project between France, Italy, and West Germany (this was the 1960s, and the Iron Curtain was in full force). When the Europa Jeep proved slow in becoming a reality (it never did), something was needed to fill the void. Which is where Volkswagen stepped in.