Born out of a demand for a high end 4 seater car for the post war german market VW instructed Karmann who in turn asked ghia to develop such a car based on the concept of the type 1 better know as the beetle.
What ghia produced was a reat engined car with strong styling concepts taken from the studebakers and Chyslers of the early 50′s , fast forward nearly 60 years and VW have produced over 700,000 of these quirky funky looking cars. Like the VW brand in general the Karmann Ghia as developed some what of a cult following of restorers and modifiers.
And few come more cult than this slammed barn find, a look that has matured and developed at the hand of mother nature for nearly 50 years.
The history of the car starts the same way as many great car stories, it was found in the back of a feild in middle america, after being parked up for an insurmountable number of years , the paint weathered and textured in to a unique pinky – purple satin suede patina after being pulled out of the feild it was coxed back on to the road before being shipped to the uk.
I got the call from Fast Car to shoot this awesome aircooled for their wild card section, however to do justice to its american barn find heritage it needed to be shot in barn , however typical english barns are normal a concrete and corrugated steel construction, a far cry from the traditional timber barns you get in the states and hardly a nice photographic backdrop, after locating a plausible wooden barn in middle england ( a task that was harder than you’d expect) we set about shooting it.
To add to the vintage, weather feel and to give the image the same feel as that sating suede patina we processed the images with some warm muted textures which I think really make the feature.
Here is a small selection of my favourite images from the shoot.
Or if you fancy seeing it in print the tearsheet can be found here
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