Working with no more than 20 employees, D&S built its cars in a slow, intensive manner.
A 1:1-scale wooden buck was built by the pair, on which every panel was formed.
There wasn’t a single pressing on the entire car, with the doors and both boots formed as single pieces and everything else made from sheet sections welded together.
Each car took 800-1000 hours to build, with Dannenhauer and Stauss themselves working long into the night and earning so little from the process that they couldn’t even afford to keep one of their own creations.
This rare D&S is charming to drive, if not dynamically impressive
So busy was the pair that little documentation was created and thus the number of D&Ss built is unknown.
Somewhere between 80-135 is the estimate, with the arrival of the Karmann Ghia effectively killing off the Sportkabriolett in 1955.
Built in low numbers and for only a short time, the D&S’s most obvious appeal today is as one of the rarest cars in the air-cooled Volkswagen pantheon.
Reynolds’ car is one of five surviving split-screen cabriolets; later examples had curved windscreens, while a couple of fixed-head coupés were also built.
‘The most obvious appeal of the D&S today is as one of the rarest cars in the air-cooled Volkswagen pantheon’
It’s a ticket to standing out in the VW scene, where a bright-purple Beetle with a V8 hanging out the back no longer bats an eyelid.
For Reynolds, however, the Sportkabriolett is a window into a unique and short-lived time when many cities within the German-speaking world had local coachbuilders creating their own VW-based cars.
No true enthusiast would begrudge Porsche’s success, nor the creation of the Karmann Ghia, but it seems a shame we’re unlikely to ever see a similar era again.
Images: Max Edleston
Thanks to: Just Kampers (01256 862288)
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Charlie Calderwood
Charlie Calderwood is Classic & Sports Car’s Features Editor