The ID range has just welcomed Volkswagen ID.Buzz, the electric version of the iconic Wolfsburg minibus. A model that has made the history of the German brand and that over the years has been the protagonist of restomod and other restoration works that have given life to the most disparate interpretations. Among these there is also the story of a Volkswagen T1 with tracks. The story of this special creation starts in 1962, on the initiative of VW engineer Kurt Ketzner, who wanted to create a vehicle that could tackle the mountain roads that led to his country of origin, making it possible to circulate both in summer and in winter.
Ketzner had identified the T1 as the perfect basis for its creation from the outset, realizing that tracks were needed in order to make this vehicle also ready to face the snow. The mechanical engineer thus gave life to the Half-Track Fox project “At first I looked around but couldn’t find the vehicle I was dreaming of. So, I decided to build it myself “ wrote Ketzner in the notes taken at the time of this work. The processing started from the axles, with the assembly of a series of 13-inch wheels to support the tracks, made of rubber and aluminum in order to make them usable both on the road and on dirt. The front axle had been modified to accommodate two 14 ”wheels fitted with regular tires, with a dedicated braking system. At the time Ketzner had not realized that the weight increase would have meant the need to increase the power as well and so under the hood remained VW’s 1,192 cc flat-four with only 34 HP which after the modifications allowed the special T1 tracked to reach only 35 km / h of maximum speed.
They were only made two specimens of this genus, with one being bought by the Porsche Museum in Gmund, Austria, in 1990 before being bought by Bullikartel eV, a company of fans of the famous Volkswagen microbuses. A first attempt at restoration was carried out in 2005 without success while in 2018 it was Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles that bought the ownership of the Half-Track Fox and then handed it over to the Classic Vehicles division which completed the restoration last February. .
#history #Volkswagen #tracks #FormulaPassionit