Meet The Ventura, An Air-Cooled VW-Based Sports Car You've Never Heard Of

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https://www.theautopian.com/meet-the-ventura-an-air-cooled-vw-based-sports-car-youve-never-heard-of/

Meet The Ventura, An Air-Cooled VW-Based Sports Car You’ve Never Heard Of

By Jason Torchinsky
October 4, 2022



I sometimes think that kit cars and specialty cars based on old air-cooled Volkswagen mechanicals aren’t exactly governed by the normal rules of reality. There should be a finite number of them, and at some point, I should be able to have encountered them all. And yet, that never seems to happen; there’s always another, some strange new gem I’ve never encountered before, dropping out of the aether in front of my face. This time, I encountered that new gem via a Facebook Marketplace ad sent to me by an Autopian named Dave. The ad shows a sleek, ’80s-wedge-looking sports car that it calls a 1968 Volkswagen Ventura, but it’s not really a Volkswagen product. Let’s look at what exactly this thing is.

One of the first things students of VW kit cars will notice about the Ventura here is that it’s not like most VW-based kit cars, which almost always used the Type I engine: The one found in the Beetle with a tall, tombstone-shaped shroud for the cooling fan. This one uses the Type 3 engine, also known as the “pancake” or “suitcase” engine because it was specifically designed to be as compact as possible, as it lived under the floor of the rear luggage areas on VW Type 3 Fast-, Square-, and Notchbacks.

Type 3s were never nearly as plentiful or cheap as old Beetles, so these never really caught on as donor platform for home-built kit cars. And that brings up another interesting point: this looks far too refined to be a home-built kit car.

That’s because it is too refined. Sure, it’s built on a VW chassis, but it wasn’t put together in a backyard. This is a factory-built car that happens to use VW mechanicals. And, if you know much about factory-built VW-based cars not built by Volkswagen, I bet you won’t be surprised to learn that factory was in Brazil.

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[dweller]

1. The type 3 was a sweet engine in the smaller VW

Last edited Fri Oct 7, 2022, 08:54 AM - Edit history (1)

Came in a 1.7 L (1700cc) or 1.8 L (1800cc) powered engine.
It was also used in the 74-76 buses, and was just not enough.
But when it was increased to 2.0 L (2000cc) in late 76, it had the power to push that breadloaf into a headwind … and was renamed a Type IV .

I picked up a 77 bus many years ago with a blown engine (and by that I mean a fist-sized hole in the crankcase) that I was able to rebuild to my specs with a new case, counterweighted crankshaft, new 96mm pistons, a hot cam set for hydraulic valves, and heads from a 914 Porsche (bigger intake/exhaust ports) that made my camper a sweet ride. Added a gauge used in aircooled ultralights that measure all head temps, oil temp, tach and other variables in real-time for safety measures. With the increase in piston size over stock 94mm, it increased the power to 2056cc or basically a 2.1 L .
I took it everywhere for many years, but the most fun was when with other previous bus owners on a ride … from a dead stop at a light it would accelerate and set them back in their seats … it was a real stump puller.

That flat 4 design is basically the same as used in today’s Subarus, just now they are water-cooled. VW enthusiasts have also placed the Subaru engine in busses, once they’ve constructed a cooling system for it.

But give me aircooled any day.




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