The Volkswagen Type 4 is one of those fascinating failures that I can’t help but love. To be fair, though, I don’t really think a car that sold nearly 370,000 copies should be considered a failure. Sure, VW’s attempt to apply the circa 1938 rear-engine, air-cooled formula to a modern, unibody, mid-size luxury family car was something of a dead end, but the car itself, I think at least, was pretty damn cool.
Type 4s don’t come up for sale very often, so when a decent-looking one does show up, it’s pretty exciting. That’s why I was so excited to see this 1972 VW 412 Fastback for sale. It’s sold now, but before it was, I giddily sent the ad to our man The Bishop, who grew up in the back of a Type 4 wagon.
This one looked surprisingly clean and in good shape, with a straight body and decent paint that looked to be Saturn Yellow, one of my favorite ’70s VW colors.
The car looked like a great example of a two-door Type 4! But there was one little thing off.
I didn’t really register it fully from the lone exterior shot in the ad, but there was one more picture, of the interior.
The interior looked unexpectedly good. But as we looked closer at the interior, something strange became evident. A detail, perhaps, but a significant detail. A deeply complex and confusing detail, one that absolutely baffles me the more I think about it. Let me explain.
First, let’s look at this interior shot, and one part of it specifically:
See that? There’s a vent window there in the door, with an extra window crank, presumably to open and close that vent window. The main window crank is there, too, obscured behind the steering wheel. That vent window crank is very unusual for Volkswagen, which always did vent windows using this tilting-knob mechanism:
But, the Type 4 was VW’s luxury car, so maybe it makes sense that it would have a much more refined vent-window-opening solution, right? Sure it would! Except for one thing:
The Type 4 never had vent windows.
Yes, that’s right! The Type 4 was never intended to have vent windows! Vent windows are archaic, anyway, right? I mean, look what VW had instead of vent windows in the Type 4, right from the Owner’s Manual:
See that? The windows had a little funny-shaped notch that would let a bit of air in if you rolled the window down a tiny bit; that was the future, after all. But note, there is no vent window there. Let’s look at a brochure, just to really drive it home:
No vent windows!
Okay, now we get to the real madness: why the hell would someone go through the extremely non-trivial effort of installing vent windows in a car that never had them? And this wasn’t from a Type 3 or Type 2 or even a Type 1, none of those used a crank mechanism, and none would have fit.
Think about it – think about the effort involved here! You’d have to have glass specially cut and shaped, you’d have to have a whole new window track installed for the shorter window, you’d have to rig up whatever the hell that crank mechanism is – the amount of sheer effort displayed here is staggering.
And why? For what? A bit of extra air? This car is even fitted with air conditioning, I can see the knobs on the dash! Nothing makes sense!
I just can’t wrap my head around this, around any of this. Of all the modifications you could make, why this one? The work/reward ratio makes no sense at all! I love it so much but it scares me, too – it’s like discovering a massive manifesto written by someone you love. It’s evidence of something deeply wrong, but at the same time weirdly impressive, just from the subtle yet obvious amount of work involved here.
I need some answers. Or even some theories. Just help me make sense of this. Please.
UPDATE: Holy crap, you guys are incredible! An Autopian named Urban Runabout solved this mystery: it was a taxi spec Type 4! Look!
There it is! Complete with the little crank! Dammit, I didn’t even think about a damn taxi-spec car!
How did a taxi spec Type 4 end up here? Also, the Taxi spec cars were four door ones? Maybe they just got some taxi spec doors and put them on a two-door? Anyway, I knew someone would have the answer. I’m just embarassed I didn’t think of this option!
Am I a VW enthusiast? Yes. Do I really like the Type 4? Nope, but I do think they’re interesting. But really, it’s stories like this that make The Autopian so appealing to me. Please, please keep it up!
Yes ha ha YES!!!
Reading about other Type 4s is why I log on to the internet each morning.
I wonder why VW used a crank that fouled the door handle? My parents BMW 2000 had a scalloped knob like a seat adjuster to operate the vent window
Can everyone please stop for a second to realize what has just happened here?
First of all- the taxi spec type 4 was imported.
Then listed for sale on facebook and noticed by one Mr Torchinsky.
Who then had enough odd car/VW knowledge to know it wasn’t supposed to have vent windows.
Who then asks the folks here how it’s possible.
Then someone else had even more odd VW knowledge or excellent google fu to discover the taxi spec.
Which when presented back to Jason actually made him embarrassed that he didn’t think of it.
Meanwhile I just learned a bunch of obscure things about a Volkswagen I sort of barely remembered had existed. The internet is a wild and amazing place sometimes.
“Type 4s don’t come up for sale very often, so when a decent-looking one does show up, it’s pretty exciting.”
There is a reason that the Type 4 is rare and it is not a good reason. Back when I was an Import Wrench my boss would buy any Type 4s he could find as invariably they would have less than 40 k miles on them and a failed fuel injection system making them cheap engine donors. Since the 72 thru 78 VW Bus also used a Type 4 engine, we would be given the task of gutting said non-running type 4’s when things got slow or a customer blew the engine in their 72 thru 78 bus…
When you make a highly unreliable car they tend to be shunned by collectors. Case in point, when was the last time you saw a Type 4 or even rarer Buick Opel By Isuzu with the aluminum wiring & garbage automatic transmission???
All cars should have tilting vent windows. Tilt them a little and they deflect wind and rain. Tilt them past 90 degrees and they blast cooling air right at your torso.
American cars like my Corvair tended to be just push it open / pull it closed which gets fingerprints on the glass. European cars such as my BMW 2002 have a crank that holds the pane at any angle. Both are fine.
That is the one feature I would change in my 1990 Miata to the point where I have considered how to engineer it.
Porsche used that “circa 1938 rear-engine, air-cooled formula” for another 20+ years and people pay stupid money for them. <shrug> Also, VW made so many oddball variations of everything for different markets back then that absolutely nothing should ever surprise you – other than how a “taxi spec” one of these ended up in MO in what looks like kind of amazingly nice condition for a 50+ year old car.
These are by far my favorite old VWs, for no reason other than I just think they are cool – the wagons in particular. And while they certainly weren’t the success that the Beetle was, they were also not at all out of the mainstream for a 1960s European family car. See Renault, Fiat, Skoda, Tatra, Hillman, et all for similar examples, albeit mostly watercooled. It was a very interesting time automotive engineering when sundry things were being tried.
I’m amazed you glossed over the other fine 70’s detail in that interior. The ubiquitous circular LCD clock, found adhered to various, mostly car interior, surfaces across this great land.
Why does a taxi need crank open wing vents?
I’m thinking security? You can have ventilation without the window open?
Perhaps the lower spec had inferior ventilation? Certainly no AC.
While rapidly scrolling the landing page I thought I saw the Dodge Deora show truck. I backed up. Oh, it was the rear 3/4 shot of the Type 4.
The clue was there all along. The color.
In the 90s when I subscribed to all the VW magazines, it seemed standard for people to remove the quarter lights for a single pane: going for the clean look. I loved the ventilation—and not just because I smoked at the time.
When I got the hand-me-down Rabbit LS together and took it for a good ride on the Parkway, I found that the combination of the open quarter lights and sunroof led to me looking like a Cockatoo. I grabbed my grandfather’s old Oster and had myself a Brittany Spears moment: I’d had long hair for 20ish years, and it was time for a change. Do wish I had talked a Polaroid selfie first, though.
Surely the four-door front doors are shorter than the two-door front doors?
Not sure if it’s just a UK think but I would call those little opening windows quarter lights which I think is just a cool name.
I have just restored and fitted opening quarterlights to my VW T3, They are a great upgrade I think. But until this article I had never heard them called anything else.
While it was out of fashion by my era, I can still identify the cause.
Torch, you clearly have not yet seen the draft, for the truest of all automotive fetishes is to worship at the altar that is the Almighty breeze gifted unto us by the vent window.
Surely the Ventnutians are dwindling in numbers, but their fervent love of that most all calming air originating from a vent window at 42 miles per hour still lives on, and you must respect their most pious and strict observations allowing them to partake of the sacrament that is the vent window
Vent windows are the best. Well, breezeway Mercuries are up there too but vent windows are my most missed automotive feature.
You think taillights have a following but the Ventnutians have a passion that burns at a white heat awaiting the return of vent windows.
I had vent windows on my first car, a 1963 Valiant convertible bought in 1971. Usually I just put the top down, but in rain they were cool.
I’m long since a bubble person who loves AC.
I love the articles like this, but I really do wonder – how do you even spot these little inconsistencies? Torch, you have an amazing mind!
To be fair, I think The Bishop saw it first!
It is now well established you and the bishop are the same person.
I’ve seen that notch in the window glass of an early bug. It is an older feature brought forward, not a “new” one for this vehicle.
Necessity is the mother of inVENTion!
You take your star!
https://www.vw411-412friends.org/en-gb/armaturen
Well done!
Well, actually…
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/lit/8_1971_411e_taxi_german.php
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/lit/1971_411_taxi_german.php
BTW – Saturn Yellow was a Super Beetle Cabriolet (See Goldie Hawn’s Beetle in “Foul Play”) and Karman Ghia color…
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/lit/1973colors.php
Texas Yellow was a 411 color – as noted in the brochure photo you have posted immediately below your line about the color.
Nice find, you can see the crank in the first brochure.
Great find, but what’s the purpose of that second window crank – just to operate the vent wing? (What absurd, unneeded complexity, if so.) My last German lessons were more than 30 years ago, so that might as well be Greek to me.
If you’ve ever owned a car w/ wing windows that just push out – you might recall that they tend to push closed due to air flow.
The crank adds mechanical friction – keeping the window opened wider for longer at speed.
I’ve owned nearly as many vehicles with vent wings as without, and only one of them behaved that way.
this is the primo Type 4 content I log onto the internet for
SEMA build.
Aliens obviously. That bent window is a portal to a wormhole to another galaxy. The entire galaxy is pushing through space using VW flat engines from square backs
Wasn’t us this time!
STEF!!!
(’72 Squareback doors?)
This is the correct answer.
It’s not, per the update.
I missed that.
Hey, now. Mine’s a 411!
I’m glad Urban Runabout found the taxi details. My brain immediately went to “are you sure it wasn’t in a hailstorm and he had to make custom glass for it?” That’s basically my biggest fear. All things 411-specific are impossible to find. The temptation to hand it off to the car storage place my friends run and tell them to deal with my loud fartwagen is very high. Hailstorms are only getting worse here.