By Bill C.
Really?
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rakes! - Would you like to out-brake a Porsche 911 in a VW Golf, without racing brakes & tires? A company named Continental Teves has been testing a new braking concept on a Golf. It uses specially designed tires, an air suspension system that lowers the car (& its center of gravity) during braking, and a master cylinder that activates instantaneously when hard braking is sensed. These changes allowed the Golf to stop in less than 99 feet from 62 mph. The best a test driver could do in a stock Golf was 125 feet. Continental says its system will be available for production cars in 2003.For Sure!
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rubaker Box – Herschel wrote a brief article on this VW concept some months back. So my attention was drawn to an article in an auto magazine recently. Curtis Brubaker, a young southern Californian in the 60s, noticed all the surfers at Newport Beach, whose mode of transportation was VW vans. His outing yielded a photo of about 8 or 9 VW vans and an impression that would materialize as innovation some years in the future.After Curtis spent a stint in the Navy, working on aircraft, followed by the Art Center College of Design in LA, he even had a hand in designing the Lear Jet; also designing for GM.
Upon opening his own studio in California, Curtis combined his aircraft experience with the VW Beetle, surfer vans and the Manx dune buggy to create the Brubaker Box concept. It used the Beetle & unibody construction with fiberglass panels, all riveted and bonded together. It had shock absorbing, wood look bumpers (unlike the photo example below), a centrally mounted fuel tank and a spare tire mounted to absorb frontal crash energy. It retained the front seat but used a custom rear lounge seat. The only entrance was a single sliding door on the passenger side. It weighed about the same as the Beetle.
Brubaker was forced to buy complete VWs from dealers, selling the stripped off parts to recoup costs, when he was unable to purchase knock-down chassis from VW. Plans to build as many as 400 Boxes per month by the end of 1972, selling for $3995, came to a halt after problems arose in obtaining financing. The company soon filed for bankruptcy.
One of the investors, and then several others, attempted to sell the Box as a kit. The most successful was Automecca "Sport Van" (1974). These are truly a collector’s item. Imagine the van you see here, is sitting on a Beetle chassis with stock wheelbase.
-Bill-