VW's sporty Karmann Ghia born 60 years ago

• Protoype shown to VW boss in November 1953
• Stylish Karmann Ghia gave VW an upscale model
• All-Beetle underneath%2C it nevertheless came across as sporty

Just about 60 years ago, a guy who worked for Ghia showed a sporty Volkswagen to an auto exec named Karmann in a garage in Paris, while the executive was attending the Paris auto show.

Karmann Ghia: Love at first sight.

No surprise. it was Wilhelm Karmann who had hired Luigi Segre of Italian fabricator Carrozzeria Ghia to make a VW-based sportster upscale from the normal VW line. Nobody bothered to tell VW what was in the works, according to VW's official history of the Karmann Ghia, produced from 1955 through 1974.

Karmann's company made many convertibles and other specialty models for automakers, including a VW Beetle Cabriolet since 1949. Leveraging that relationship, he was able to successfully pitch the Karmann Ghia to what VW says was an "otherwise conservative Volkswagen chief Heinrich Nordhoff."

All-Beetle underneath, the Karmann Ghia appealed to much different crowd. VW now sometimes looks back on the car as a "Beetle in a sports coat." It allowed the automaker to appeal to richer, more sophisticated buyers who were willing to pay more for a stylish car.

At first, all Karmann Ghias were coupes. Convertibles joined in 1957. VW's official count shows 362,601 coupes were built and 80,881 convertibles.

Based on Beetle architecture, Karmann Ghias had a small-displacement, air-cooled, four-cylinder engine in back, driving the rear wheels.

Hemmings, publisher of authoritative books on old cars, says the 1967 - 1969 1550 series was among the most popular. It was old enough to still have small bumpers -- U.S. regulations requiring massive bumpers hadn't yet ruined the looks -- and came with "a well-appointed cabin" and "responsive 53 horsepower engine."

Those models were $2,245 (coupe) and $2,445 (convertible), some $500 or $600 more than Beetles. Today, Karmann Ghias are advertised across a wide price range, from about $2,000 to more than 10 times that much, depending on age, equipment and condition.

The curvaceous body required most panels to be welded, shaped, smoothed by hand. According to Hemmings, "Sixteen artisan sculptors were retained to create the complex curves around the windshield and rear deck by smoothing molten English pewter with a beech wood hand tool."

Today, the Karmann works is owned by VW and called Volkswagen Osnabrück GmbH. It makes the Golf Cabriolet, Porsche Boxster and Cayman, and a model called Volkswagen XL1.

That's a super-economy car able to average 262 mpg. It weighs less than 1,800 lbs. and runs on a two-cylinder diesel engine rated 47 hp, and a 27-hp electric system. VW's made just a few dozen for testing.