I haven’t yet heard a Volkswagen enthusiast object to this new car’s name.
The Karmann Ghia (1955-74) is the most beautiful car ever made. So simply elegant, sexy and sporty-looking (with that lame but lovely 4-speed air-cooled engine that’s better suited to lawnmowers), the Karmann Ghia was a perfect blend of German engineering and Italian design.
After the Volkswagen Beetle was a hit — cute, cheap, reliable — VW thought to make a sister for the Beetle that looked like a sports car. The Carrozzerria Ghia design firm in Turin was tasked with its looks, while VW engineers figured out how to cram the Beetle’s guts into a sleeker car, and when it was done, it didn’t have a name.
VW boss Wilhelm Karmann thought to put his name on it. The Ghia folks said hey, it’s our car, too, and that’s how we got Karmann Ghia.
This ugly 2026 thing was not designed by Ghia, and Karmann’s dead. The new Beetle didn’t look like a Beetle, but that didn’t bother me — I owned two Beetles but didn’t love them nearly as much as the two Karmann Ghias. The new Karmann Ghia is neither a Karmann nor a Ghia — to retain that name, that’s gonna bug (no pun intended) me.