- El Dub's NOSTALGIA VW Corner -
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 EMPI GTV... The first years... 1965 to 1967...
GRAN TOURISMO VOLKSWAGEN BY EMPI Why can't your VW dealer sell you one?
If you were in the market for a new car in 1951 it is highly unlikely that you made an attempt to purchase a Volkswagen. It had everything the Americabn automobile buyer did not want : meager horsepower, weird styling, lack of interior room, minimal luggage space, no flash, zero extras and an unlimited amount of no prestige. In addition, you not only had to shift the gears by hand, you had to double-clutch on every change because the transmission was one of those antique types without synchromesh(...).
GTV versus an all stock '67 VW at OCIR... What a plan!
The premise of VW in its refusal to change the fundamental styling of the beetle has been essentially sound. There is an old saying in racing "Never monkey with a going machine", and with sales continuing at high peak, with demand outstripping supply there was very good reason for not changing the shape of the bug.(...). This is not to say that everyone took the 'do-nothing' attitude of Volkswagen with a fatalitic shrug. One of the earliest VW owners in the West was a young motorcycle champion and speed shop proprietor in Stockton, Calif. named Joe VITTONE, impressed with the way the VW wouldn't get out of its own way, started with engine and installed a longer stroke crankshaft to increase displacement. This led to improvements in the breathing with larger valves and eventually with a whole line of VW engines 'hop-up' equipment. (...).
Padded dash with walnut veneer and walnut knobs includes complete instrumentation. The steering wheel is covered in leather. Multi-plex radio and stereo tape system are extra cost options not included in the Mark IV package.
Vittone took a long hard look at the wandering ways of the beetle and came up with his invention, the Camber Compensator (...) and did not stop with it. He also developed sturdier shock absorbers as well as a stiffer stabilizer bar. Demand for this extensive list of imporvement items led to the creation of EMPI.(...). With Vittone interest in Volkswagens it was only natural that he become a dealer for the marque, which he did in 1954 with the opening of his Economotors in Riverside, Calif.
This, in no way, interfered with his flourishing EMPI business and in the mid-60s it was equally natural that there appear a combination of the two. The result is the EMPI GTV, a Volkswagen offered for sale with EMPI accessories already installed rather than being added piece-meal. The GTV is built in four configurations, Mark I through Mark IV. Essentially, the addition of the various options is designed to first, improve handling and performance of the basic VW, and secondly to enhance the comfort, convenience and the drab appearance of the stock beetle.
Brake detonater was used on both VWs to measure distance from brake application tosotping point accurately.
The GTV Mark I, the basic car of the line, includes wide rim wheels, Camber compensator, heavy duty front stabilizer bar, free flow exhaust system, a short throw shift lever, a host of chrome trim appearance, padded dash, bumper guards< and bumper stiffeners and a fine ventilation system to name only a part of the list. Each step up the line to the Mark IV adds more and more of the EMPI improvements up to add and including complete instrumentation with tachometer. In creating the GTV, it was intended that this would become a special vehicle available to VW dealers accross the nation as an added attraction, a vehicle which would bring 'lookers' into the showroom and, if sold, would add to the profits of the dealer. Not the least of the merits of the car is its eye appeal. For this is a truly handsome Volkswagen, a gatherer of crowds wherever it is parked and as such could do much to improve the faltering VW image.
The EMPI suspension component at work as the factory version of the VW leans hard in a turn while the GTV stays comparatively flat.
In order to determine for ourselves just how deep are the differences, we made arrangments with Joe Vittone to take delivery on a new, 1967, strictly stock Volkswagen and at the same time, delivery on an equally new GTV Mark IV. The ne 1500cc version of the VW is an improvment over the 1200. It is a little livelier and not quite so noisy. But it still has all the inherent faults that we disliked about the beetle in 1951 despite advertising claims of 'improved engineering'.
While one can now cruise at freeway speeds the old anxiety isn't any the less and the wander from side to side gives the feeling of a tire going soft. Big trucks still deposit you at least a foot out of your normal line. Dedicaced VW owners tell us this is part of the game, a device to keep their adrenaline flowing. We find it a bit too aging. The GTV, on the other hand, goes where it is pointed, stays there regardless of crosswinds and has the extra snap to pull the car out of a potentially troublesome situation. Surprisingly, it is less affected by gusts and the blasts from passing trucks that the Porsche 1600 owned by a staff member.
In the interior one might be in a different world. Where the stock V is stark and austere with bare painted metal, the GTV is plush and luxurious. Padded dash with simulated walnut veener, complete instrumentation (...) are only a few of the creative comforts added.
Dramatic evidence of nose dip and rear wheel tuck under is given at the moment the stock VW begins to spin. In the same spot on the skid pad, at identical speed, the GTV goes into a four wheel drift still showing evidence of understeer.
Our standard testing was conducted at the Orange Count International Raceway just south of Santa Ana, Calif. Here we put the two cars through our normal procedures using the drag strip for acceleration runs and braking tests.
Since the GTV was equipped with the 1700cc engine kit there was really no contest through the 1/4 mile timing trap. Best time for the stock VW was an ET of 20.46 for 61.81 mph agains the GTV's 17.14 and 76.66 mph. Brakes ares identical. (...). A dramatic difference was shown between the two cars, however, in our cornering tests. The GTV corners flat with almost no body lean. The stocker, as expected, still leans heavily. (...). The sum of what Vittone and EMPI have created is a little Gran Turismo sporting machine with excellent manners under all road conditions, sufficient power to be a contender in the traffic signal grand prix and enough added appearance options to make it a neck-twister.
The power plnat of the 1700cc EMPI GTV looks deceptively stock. Its performance, however, comes as a shock to many Corvette drivers who challenge it...
There can be no question that over the past 14 years Joe Vittone and EMPI have done an incredible job in improving the Volkswagen image. Through its own adverstising EMPI has carried the VW imprint into thousands of areas where normal VW exposure would not normally reach. A striking example of this is the privately financed and entered 'Inch Pincher', a drag racing VW, prepared and modified by Dean LOWRY of the EMPI staff.
Staged and ready for the signals to begin on the Chrondek christmas tree. The GTV won the race handily.
Throughout the world, VW dealers have long displayed in tasteful showcases EMPI products specifically designed to enhance the performance or apperance of VW vehicles. An official bulletin sent to all VW dealers by Vokswagen Pacific date June 7th 1967 states that the factory's warranty responsibility will be discharged by the modification or addition parts not approved. To date, we know of no case of damage to any car resulting from the installation of EMPI equipment. Joe Vittone has offered the GTV to other dealers with an accompanying offer to fully underwrite the warranty of any GTV sold. Can you buy a GTV? Yes, despite all the factory opposition you can buy a VW that will handle, that is safe and will perform. You might have to travel 3.000 miles, which is certainly a shame.
Inside wheel of the GTV still remains in contact with pad as the Camber Compensator increases roll stiffness.
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- SOOPERWAGEN... by Eugene MARTIN -
In 1932 Ford Motor Company sold 258,927 passenger cars. Just a drop in the bucket taken in today's context of 9-million-vehicle-years. Even an individual with the most superficial interest in automobiles would ask himself, "If so very few units (comparatively speaking) were built so long ago, why are there so many still around?" Like who knows where there's a cherry '32 Ford? Who even cares?
The new 'in' car according to leading automotive magazines : the EMPI GTV is a fresh, new approach to the Volkswagen, tailored to please the most dicriminating driver. Test drive one at your VW dealer today. That picture appeared on a very very cool promotional EMPI postcard.
Of course, we're being obviously obtuse for a point. Everybody acknowledges the '32 is cherished because it had the first low-priced V-8 and that, more important, as improvements to that engine came along, the car accepted them on a bolt-on basis. Along with style, which is at best a personal matter, the Ford mystique -''A,'' ''T,'' '32 or what have you -has always been low cost and interchangeability.
I love series of period pictures coming from the same photoshoot... I think we have here the 3 edited ones with that awesome blue GTV that appeared on the '67 EMPI catalog.
Although the Deuce Ford thing started in California after thirty years, its popularized form is all over on the coast. Today you select some form of the classical hot rod '32 and restore a machine to it. There's been a subtle shift away from the try-your-own-hand-of-inventiveness of former years for the simple fact that virgin bodies no longer exist -the whole concept has taken on a kind of outlived-its-utility quaintness. Like those keen, old Duesenbergs you see in Road & Track every now and again, the '32 is a rolling curiosity.
I love that beautiful italian looking EMPI girl posing in of front of an all red GTV (red GTV are my all time favourite, bet why?)... Doesn't she looks cute with her 70s bikini?
So now what? The VW. The what? The VW. It's Germany's version of the Henry Ford syndrome, isn't it? Everything Volkswagen has ever said in their frantic shoot-Detroit's -planned-obsolescence-in-the-head, low-key advertising, is that the more the car changes, the more it remains the same.
When I told you I love period pictures series... You have here 6 pictures of the same girl posing by the very same GTV... Only on the Nostalgia corner or what?
And by the end of next year, they'll be 15 million of the little dudes floating around the world -2 million in the U.S. alone. Okay, you've got the numbers and low price and interchangeability and acceptance by the youth market (Ford has had that for years and lost it in '55). It doesn't take an MIT degree to see that the VW will far outstrip the popularity of the '32 Ford and every other all-time favourite to boot.
There was a time when vehicles were allowed easily on the sand of the beach... Those were the days...
Believe it or not, the home office in Wolfsburg, Germany could care less about the wild, young, money-laden Americans that leave a trail of greenbacks across every major market, especially the automotive one. What we mean is that the Germans want to sell them cars, but not special cars - what could be the matter with the perfect beetle? For the average person, very little. For the kids, possibly a lot. That's the raison d'être for the EMPI outfit -making the VW more faultless.
VW, girl in swimsuit, beach, palm trees... Glamour...
Join the Swingers...
EMPI is Joe Vittone. It's actually Engineered Motor Products, Inc., but Joe's the guy who started it all. A few years ago he began making camber compensators to correct the beetle's inherent oversteering difficulties. In pre-1500 days you'd go lickety-split around a bend and up would go the back end as the rear wheels de-cambered.
Note the Ghia in the background...Quite probably another dealership demo car...
If you were at the right speed -the car might throw in a free barrel-roll. Most owners never realized that this trait existed because they drove low and slow, not being schooled in the proper technique of keeping the r's up on the power curve. But those smouldering Juan Fangio's knew it, and if they were smart, they went out and bought one of Joe's camber compensators.
I can't stop wondering where this car ended and if it eventually still in existence somewhere...
So that's how it all started, a mini-empire that now includes one of the biggest, if not the most spectacular, new car dealerships in America -Economotors in Riverside, California. Just because it's a VW place doesn't mean it's the usual blue and white sanitary but conservative, ho hum, beetle sales outlet -because Joe's shimmering palace is much more. What it really looks like is one of those model architectural proposals that everyone is going to build someday, somewhere, when he gets the money. The profit margin on VW's is the same percentage as on a Cadillac, so Joe didn't have to wait. He went ahead while factory officials protested that he wasn't conforming to their 'image.'
To be continued on page 3...
- DEALER GUIDE FOR THE GTV PROGRAM -
Joe VITTONE made a special brochure to help dealers promote the GTV program... The idea was to put the GTV in highlight at the dealsership, boost sells and... make profits of course...
A lovely black '67 was on the cover of that guide with an equal lovely high class woman...
... as evident on this color picture...
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Copyright 2025 El Dub & BenJ - All rights reserved.
E-mail : eldub@cal-look.com
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A FRENCH TRIBUTE
TO THE PIONNEERS OF VW DRAG RACING
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- HERITAGE By Drew Hardin -
HOT ROD, the bible of all-American, big-cube performance allotted four pages of its July 1967 issue to a story on an import-car dealership in Riverside, California, that was on the cutting edge of a growing automotive phenomenon.
For anyone wondering why Feature Editor Eric DAHLQUIST was filling valuable real estate with a story about funny-looking German cars, his story's subhead laid the groundwork: There are three million VWs in this country. The marque is sixth nationally in sales, and Beetle accessories are coming out our ears. Very few in the Detroit establishment understand why. They can't figure out the kids either. Burn!
That's Vittone at right in the photo, leaning against a stock VW while Eric DAHLQUIST kneels beside an 'EMPI-ized' GTV Mk IV. Pictures of this photoshoot by Eric RICKMAN
Detroit was in the thick of ramping up its musclecar offerings to capture the 'youth market' while, Dahlquist pointed out, 'everywhere we look, in high-school parking lots, in college parking lots or just parking lot parking lots, a swarm of Beetles engulfs ever shrinking islands of regular vehicles. Then there is the VW hop-up phenomenon that is blazing out of sight in mushrooming potential, as more and more 1.700-lb. weaklings take the pay-as-you-go muscle-building treatment.'
Leading the way was Joe Vittone, his Economotors Porsche-VW dealership, and his line of VW aftermarket parts sold under the EMPI (European Motor Products Inc.) brand.
SERVICE IS OUR KEYWORD on the front of this EMPI promotional postard while the back said : Joe VITTONE cordially invites you to test drive the new EMPI GTV at his fabulous VW-PORSCHE dealership in Riverside. Drive the EMPI GTV, the new 'Mod-Rod'.
Of the dealership, Dahlquist said: There's enough shining glass, steel and landscaping here to vie with the GM Tech Center back in Warren, Michigan, and when you see the cushiony customer lounge and patio, conference rooms, combination parts counter and speed center, work area with waxed, rubber-tiled floor, forested with 26 single-post hydraulic hoists, you can hear the gnashing of teeth in Detroit as the inevitable draws near. Any Chevy dealer would be green with envy at this setup, but the piece de resistance is the cars the ever lovin' fantastically detailed Beetles! You can get anything from the prosaic humble bug to a pizazzy cold-air package street job that will scare the lederhosen off a GTO.
Imagine finding such a GTV these days...
While an illustration in the story showed all of the parts that went into the GTV conversion, Dahlquist described it this way: Driven in the door of the EMPI telephone booth, a mild-mannered transporter becomes a glistening, pinstriped, wide-ovaled, mag wheeled, wood dashed, stereo radio tape decked, power mad Mr. Terrific, who can foil mean old Porsches in a single bound, or something like that.
Under the 'power mad' umbrella, the VW's 1500cc engine could be improved with large-bore cylinders; an upgraded Zenith carburetor; a new intake manifold; ported, polished and milled heads, a new camshaft, a Bosch centrifugal advance distributor; and an extractor exhaust system. For his article, Dahlquist requested a Bug with all the engine mods except the big-bore treatment for an 'equal displacement comparison' with a stock engine.
As delivered, the reworked engine yielded 84.2 hp maximum at 4200 rpm on the dyno, where the unexpurgated Deutschlander can just manage 53 at 4200 rpm, he wrote.
Economotors building was really an amazing place...
Dahlquist took the stock VW to the dragstrip, ran 20.89 at 62.01 mph and, with a little tinkering (including 'a velocity stack made from a plastic drinking glass'), got the car’s trap speed up to 65 mph. The GTV Mk 4 made quarter-mile passes in the low 19s at 70 mph; but with a few mods (a stinger exhaust, a valve-lash adjustment, fresh spark plugs, and the fan belt removed) dropped into the 17.20s at 76 mph.
Imagine finding such a GTV these days...
'Ach du lieber!' Dahlquist exclaimed, comparing these et's to 'what '55 Fords and Chevys used to run before being cloaked in the hot setup.'
The 'humble, unaffected Beetle is the wave of the future' Dahlquist said. As it turned out, so was Economotors. Not only was Vittone pioneering the promotion and sale of VW aftermarket parts, but his dealership was also part of an innovative concept in auto retailing.
In the early '60s, seven Riverside area dealers bought a 55-acre parcel of land (a citrus orchard at the time) and built new facilities in what would become the Riverside Auto Center. Those first seven dealers were all domestic brands, but Vittone's Economotors and a Toyota dealership were soon added to the mix. Economotors is gone now. Its space occupied by the Riverside Metro Auto Group—which does still include a VW showroom.
- SMALL WONDER By Eric Dahlquist -
Hot Rod July 1967.
Five guys in a VW to Erie, Pennsylvania; that's how I learned to know and love the beetle. It was 1957. Wide lapels and padded shoulders were out and Ivy League natural shoulders were in. Dwight Eisenhower had just been re-elected for a second term, running against Adlai Stevenson instead of Jack Kennedy, who decided to wait for '60. Gunsmoke was in its third year on TV, and Emory Cook and Cliff Bedwell were about to electrify the drag racing world with a 166.97 run in the 8's! Despite Detroit cries of un-Americanism on the part of citizens who bought one, a foreign-car boomlet, epitomized by an odd-looking little German machine, was beginning to be felt. The dew was still on the melon.
Did you ever seen a '67 GTV truck fully loaded? Awesome!
It was all pretty uncomplicated. Five of us wanted to get to Erie (actually Wattsburg, a few miles south), 130 miles distant, for the drags; and being unemployed, students or a combination of both, cost-per-mile was the critical consideration on any such voyage. One ray of hope shone through our darkened economy; Joe D'Errico or, more precisely, Joe and his VW. At a time when the beetles still meant insects plural, good old forward-thinking Joe had a Volkswagen complete with 37 Teudonic dray horses. A torsion-sprung black jewel that would get us to the track at slightly less than 30-miles-per-gallon of low test, allow a surplus for pit passes and food (Erie always had the best hot dogs in the world), and get us back in one piece, relative comfort and in a humorous frame of mind. The excursion stands out in my memory like a milestone in the history of overland transportation.
I have counted 7 cars and have no idea where the picture was taken...
In a small way, it was. Before the 1200, 1300 and 1500 engines, the chrome Porsche and mag wheels, candy-dipped exteriors, wooded-over interiors, tawny long-haired dollies blurring down the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu with a surfboard growing through the sunroof, or the extractor exhausts moaning into Bob's Big Boy on Van Nuys Boulevard; before all this - for all its delightfully bizarre foibles - that ride through an early fall day in a VW was a peek behind the curtain of the future to a time when the odd-looking machine would actually challenge the Big Three for outright supremacy.
A decade later, the Volkswagen is what's happening! Everywhere we look, in high school parking lots, in college parking lots or just parking lot parking lots, a swarm of beetles engulf ever-shrinking islands of "regular" vehicles. Then there's the VW hop-up phenomenon that is blazing out of sight in mushrooming potential, as more and more 1700-pound weaklings take the pay-as-you go muscle building treatment.
If some of you perceive recognizable parallels between the Volkswagen phenomenon and the Model T Ford, we do too. (Not to mention Ford, who blanch at the prospect of having 15 million of anything to compete with.) And so, off we rode to Riverside where, at the house that Joe Vittone built, Economotors a brand-new 1500 was waiting for a road test. Econo is the largest Volkswagen dealership in the U.S., and it looks it.
There's enough shining glass, steel and landscaping here to vie with the GM Tech Center back in Warren, Michigan, and when you see the cushiony customer lounge and patio, conference rooms, combination parts counter and speed center (Joe also owns EMPI), work area with waxed rubber-tiled floor, forested with 26 single-post hydraulic hoists, you can hear the gnashing of teeth in Detroit as the inevitable draws near.
Any Chevy dealer would be green with envy at this setup, but the pi�ce de resistance is the cars - the ever-lovin', fantastically-detailed beetles! You can get anything from the prosaic humble bug to a pizazzy cold-air package street job that will scare the lederhosen off a GTO - but that's another story.
After all this, plus the sight of a trade-in lot filled with Chevelle 396's, Fairlane GTA's, Sting Rays and other assorted super-cars, testing the beetle was almost anti-climactic. But we took heart, because, after a get-acquainted session between us and the stocker, an EMPI-ized 1500 was on the ramp for comparison. Putting the knitting needle-like stick through the gears the first time, it doesn't take a stopwatch to tell that acceleration has been escalated sharply in the last ten years.
To be continued on page 3...
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