Current restoration work: '54 Oval-Beetle Sliding-Ragtop, '59 Beetle Sedan, '59 KG Cabrio, '60 KG Coupe, '63 Notchback, '64 KG Cabrio, '64 Notchback, '65 Beetle Sedan, '65 13-Window Bus, '66 21-Window Bus, '68 KG Coupe, '69 KG Cabrio, '70 Bus, '71 Bus, '71 KG Cabrio, '74 412, '74 1303 Cabrio, '74 1303 Sedan,
" Millie "
~ 1959 Karmann Ghia Cabrio ~
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1959 Karmann Ghia Coupe - 'Millie'
A reVOLKS reconstructive restoration.
This 1959 Karmann Ghia is sure to be an award winner.....someday :)
After 40+ years it had been repainted only once then it was promptly driven into the back-end of a bus 400 miles down the road!!!
;( I can see tears welling in your eyes now....

Cheer up! The good news for "Millie" is her resurrection will be extremely gratifying because her doner front clip (picured above with snow) was sourced and as such we have saved an otherwise fire-victim (we called it Cybil) to donate her front end... You know what that means don't you? Those darling small air vents, droopy headlights and "t-90" tail lights will bring her 'Back to the future' in style!
We're thinking of either Bernina Blue like we did on the award winning [ Sunny ], or perhaps an equally gorgeous Amazon Green combination?
so it may be a wee bit challenged in the cosmetic department :) still 6 volt with an 40 HP 'upgrade' :)
These are the first pictures we have of Millie when we towed her home.
They show that she was nearly complete except for that drastically damaged front end! The previous owner who purchased it after the collision took after the crunch-zone with an air-saw and this was the result :(
On a positive note, the engine bay was in relatively great shape and contained an early "40 horse", 6 volt, engine with stale-air heating system....an obvious "upgrade" over the 36hp that should be there :)).
sizing up the doner front clip's bulk head sizing up the doner front clip's bulk head some rusting uncovered in inner fenders doner panels aren't perfect....yet :)
Well, these pics show alot of work that has already been accomplished - that is - cutting up the doner car!
In the first two pics you see the doner's front clip from about mid-gas tank to nose section being trial fitted. It was a fairly involved process to get the clip this close-fitting as the PO had used an air saw and randomly cut the original front end off and not symetrically. Thus, the two sides had to be matched to the doner clip while sporting completely different profiles.
The solution is to make a cardboard template of the original area and using a few registration points transfer the original cuts onto the doner which was generously cut from the source Ghia. This enabled me to get nearly exact translations of the cut.
Keep in mind, that even though Millie still has accident damage existing, we are trying to preserve as much of her original body's bulk-head as possible.
clip to car fitting clip to car fitting temporary tack welds hold doner clip on temporary tack welds hold doner clip on
Here you see how close I got the clip matched to the body.
Not bad considering how ragged the body cuts were. Now that they are this close, I will recut the doner clip and body to even up the area and form a 1" ribbon gap which will be welded with another doner piece of steel to mate the two parts together perfectly and eliminate any gaps.
Once I got the doner clip (front bulk-head) trial fitted, I tacked a few welds into place to hold it there temporarily, so the rest of the front end could be trial fitted too....
front passenger-side incision lines drawn damaged skins cut off watch out for old-school lead/pewter splatter! watch out for old-school lead/pewter splatter! lower front quarter incision line drawn lower incision cut completed
These pics show the removal of the original fender skin on the passenger side.
Due to accident damage, it was decided to cut the original skin off and replace it with the doner fender skin, which due to exposure doesn't look as good but is in fact in better shape because it was not subjected to front end accident stresses.
Look at the 3rd and 4th pics closely... See all that splatter marking? That was caused by the lead that the Karmann factory used to 'body-fill' the factory weld locations. Made for a splattery-mess when I hit it with the plasma cutter!
The last two pics show where the lower portion of the fender was marked to be cut. This area will be removed entirely once the front fender is installed permenently, but for now, I want to use the badge area pin holes to help with doner fender registration and alignment....
front passenger-side doner fender section matching incision lines on fender to body cuts trial fitting the doner fender temporary tack welds hold fender in place
These pics show the doner fender being marked-up, cut and trial fitted to the newly/temporarily attached bulk-head on the body.
There are some areas of the doner which appear very rusty in these pictures, but really the rusting isn't that bad. The car was originally red and much of it was burned off in the fire leaving exposed metal or rusty-looking primer.... Much of the nasty appearance also comes from the fact that I used a blow torch on the panels to remove old undercoating too. The easiest way to remove old undercoating is to heat up the other side of the panel with a blow torch. Once heated the undercoating will slip right off with a suitable scraper or even chisel. Of course the paint (and any hidden bondo) will be damaged beyond use and need to be removed too but at this stage; who cares!? :)
fender-to-trunk alignment trial fitting the nose panel Geez! It almost looks like a Ghia again :) Get the picture?
These pics demonstrate the rest of the front panels being trial fitted on the newly/temporarily attached bulk-head.
Here you see the trunk being placed into position to check fender-to-hood alignment which is obviously critical.
Also you see the nose panel being tack welded into place to check hood-to-nose alignment too.

Now that most of the front end has been temporarily fitted, the panels and the bulk-head will be removed and sent off for media blasting to get them back to bare, clean steel. Any rust damaged areas will then be corrected/replaced with new steel and new lower nose sections will be welded onto the panels. After the doner sections are clean, straight and ready, they will be permenantly welded together onto the body.
These pictures show that the nose is relatively straight, but does have a few dings and repair work in it's future.

inner fender repair - WIP front bulk head after media blasting front bulk head welded-in permenantly
Wow! How time slips by....
The time between these pictures and the last ones has been exactly one year :(
We had the doner panels media blasted last October (of 2002) and in May we finally got to spend a couple of hours on the ol' Ghia.
The first picture shows Nadine cutting out some rusty inner fender sections from the front dogleg. This was done not because it Had to be but because she wanted it to be. You see this area was a little challenged in the rust department and since we were going to this extreme it made sense to extract all rust instead of just that which was 'bad enough'.
The second picture shows the doner clip having been test fitted again after it was media blasted. Here you can see how much of the doner was rusty as the lower, inner sections were gone.
Six months later and the third picture is the result - the front bulk head is now permenantly welded into place and much of the tedious reconstruction is completed. Here also you see that the doner metal is kinda' bluish in color. This is a special coating which is applied to bare steel to keep it free of oxidizing while the major work is performed. Also visible in the third picture is the beginning of replacement steel to the lower, front nose section...This is new panel for the bottom of the tire well along with some hand fabricated panels forming the lower nose bulk-head behind it.
Well, it shouldn't take as long to finish it from here as it has to get to here. The body, from A-pillar back is already going through the initial stages of block sanding to straighten-out any imperfections in it's otherwise great shape.