Karmann Shuts Its Doors

German coachbuilder folds after building final CLK convertible

By Riggers / Wednesday, 24 June 2009 / Loading comments

The iconic VW Karmann Ghia

Specialist coachbuilder Karmann has closed its doors for the last time after its final car, a Mercedes CLK convertible, rolled off the company’s production line in Osnabruck, Germany on Monday.

The firm, which employed more than 2000 people, has blamed its collapse partly on the changing behaviour of mainstream car manufacturers, which have increasingly moved production of niche models in-house rather than subcontracting out to specialist coachbuilders.

The failure of the firm has also been partly attributed to crippling social provision for its employees, according to the Financial Times Deutschland, angering workers’ unions. “It is outrageous that the insolvency should be blamed on the social plan costs, when they are not even paying severance pay,” said Hartmut Riemann, of the IG Metall union.

Karmann is probably best known for its VW-based, Ghia-styled coupe, of which it sold more than 400,000 examples between 1955 and 1974, but the German company has actually produced more than 3.3million vehicles between 1949 – when it first started to build Beetle convertibles for VW.

Below are some highlights of Karmann’s back catalogue.

Karmann-built BMW 3.0 CS (albeit an Alpina version)	Escort Cosworth: Essex boy from Osnabruck
Karmann did bodies-in-white for the 968	Karmann built 86,000 6-series models
Karmann's name was on the first Scirocco...	...and also on the chunky Corrado