Met up with Karmann folk while in Germany

[Tempest 0]

During my visit to Germany this week, I met up with some of the organisational team for the Karmann meet beginning of September.

 

One of them still works for Karmann in Osnabrück, and his work experience dates back to the days of building Mk2 Roccos and indeed Corrados. He told me that ever since Karmann stopped building the Corrado he hadn't really enjoyed building any of the cars that left Karmann's assembly lines. A real Rocco freak, I suppose ;-) They also joked about having to build right-hand drive Roccos and Rados :lol:

 

He also told me that despite the good news of Karmann having secured the deal on manufacturing the new Audi A3 cabrio, this won't happen at the Osnabrück plant. Although Osnabrück sends out 150 offers a day to all sorts of car companies offering them a range of products etc. they in effect haven't got any work for the next 2 years!

 

This may very well mean that Karmann may be no more in the near future!

 

This also means that this year's Karmann visit (museum and factory tour) may very well be the last one ever!

 

As you all know, it's in Osnabrück that every single Rocco and Rado was built (I've actually touched the holy ground where the original assembly lines were located last year - Crossfires now leaving those lines).

 

So, the moral of the story is, there may very well be an Edition 38 meet next year, but not another visit to Karmann :-((

 

Right, last night in D, time to get some more beers down :lol:, still on dial-up as well, so no time to check out the Rocco thread here ;-)

 

Tempest

[crdo16v 0]

Sad news indeed, maybe it's time that the blueprints for the Corrado cabrio had the dust blown off them & they could build it with a tuned VR motor, yee hargh !

I worked (in the UK) with a German guy who worked on Corrados at Osnabruk but he was a bit cagey about it, maybe he did'nt want to tell me too many secrets.

It would be tragic if a firm/factory that had such a great heritage had to close. Can't see why personally VW can't help them out by giving them some work, let's face it the current VW range is a little bit uninspired & they could help them build some cars with a bit of character.

[corradophil 3]

It would be a real shame if they closed. When I was there they weren't just making cars, they were milling moulds for panels to be used by other companies too.

 

They have Corrado bonnet (and others) hanging up on the production line which was signed by the workers when production ended.

[RW1 0]

Given they have contracts in the future if I understand Eric's jottings correctly, I suspect the factory car production lines will be mothballed if the pause is short term. The factory also produces other things such as stampings for press machines and CAD work so that could possibly balance the running costs of keeping the factory.