Top Notch - '62 1500


 


Carrying on our celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Type 3, we bring you a very special 1500 saloon


 


The guy who owns this 1962 1500, 38 year-old Mario Steinhauser from Waldershof in Bavaria, is a top guy and serious VW nut with a passion for Type 3s. He currently owns, wait for it, a ’52 Split Window Beetle, a very cool Old School-styled ’57 Lowlight Karmann Ghia, a ’63 1500S Squareback, a ’64 Squareback, a ’62 Notch with 40,000kms on the clock, a ’62 ‘survivor’ Notch with a lot of patina, the '62 Notch you see here and two ’67 Squarebacks, one of which is a factory sunroof model. Wow.


This Notch is a perfect mix of stock original with a few choice additions to make it even better. He bought it in November 2009 as a very good original car and decided straight away he was going to go all out to get it looking the way it does now. “The car was built at the end of 1962 and came with a factory Golde steel sunroof,” Mario explains. “Its first owner lived in Berlin and he drove the car until 1982. The second owner lived in Dortmund and he stored the car away until 2009.” So when Mario went to see the car it had done just 58,000kms (36,040 miles) from new. Better still, it was in great condition and came with reams of original paperwork and service history. The only downside was it had a big scrape down one side, from the headlight to the tail light.


“I totally stripped the car. The wings, bonnet, boot lid and doors went to the sandblaster to get the surface rust off the edges, then the panels went to the painter.” In the meantime, Mario busied himself getting the engine bay and under-bonnet area sandblasted. The front valance was incorrect for the year of the car and, after some research, it turned out the car had a bit of a tap in 1980 and a later valance was welded on to repair the damage. Luckily, Mario had an NOS ’62 panel in stock so this was welded in place. 


The chassis was also sandblasted and repainted before being fitted up. All the original VW components were replaced but the suspension is now three splines lower at the front and one at the back and a CSP vented and drilled disc brake conversion has been fitted at the front. The original ‘matching numbers’ engine wasn’t part of the plan, as Mario wanted to use the 2176cc engine from his Lowlight. The only problem being this was a Type 1 with upright cooling rather than a Type 3 pancake motor, which meant Mario had to convert it all over. The exhaust system he chose to use was a Thunderbird header and muffler, both ceramic coated. The good news was one of Mario’s really good friends, Sebastian ‘Basti’ Leskowski, was on hand to help out. “The work was done in a 24 hour bolt-on orgy, Basti coming 450km (279 miles) down from Wolfsburg, one way!’ And not for the first time, Basti did exactly the same thing two years earlier when Mario was building his Karmann Ghia.


The next hurdle was something Mario certainly hadn’t planned on – during the journey back from the body shop, the original and perfect headliner was badly damaged, but a mercy call was made to Mühlbauer trim shop in Regensburg who agreed to sort it out. The body wasn’t even removed from the trailer before it was off on another 120mile trip. The next day at lunchtime Mario’s ’phone rang and the voice at the end of the line said “Headliner is finished”, in German, obviously. “I drove straight down to Regensburg again to pick up my car and the headliner looked just like an original one. Perfect job guys!”  


The wings, bonnet, boot and both doors were finished next so Mario fitted them himself. Then, once he was done, the painter came over that same night and polished the whole car.


Four hour’s sleep later, he dragged himself back into the garage to “throw in the interior, fix the bumpers, emblems and trim on. 


This Notch is just so clean and original looking, but a whole lot cooler with its 5 x 15 ET21 Speedmaster alloys with 145/65 x 15 front tyres and 165/65s out back, a Gene Berg shifter with DKT club logo etched into the handle and that original Speedwell woodrim steering wheel with repro horn button. Exterior trim is minimal on a ’62 Type 3 anyway and, to be honest, adding to it is only going to let people know you have totally missed the point! However, there’s a double-throw-down-triple-whammy change that any early Type 3 nut would approve of, and that’s to change the stock door mirror with rounded edges for the far, far rarer and virtually never seen ‘cat eye’ mirror.
Apart from the hot motor, these are the only changes Mario has made from stock, and we think he’s nailed it. Less is more, more or less.


Talking of the engine, Mario decided he preferred the idea of the original 1493cc unit so, by the time we got together for the photoshoot, it had been re-fitted, complete with an NOS exhaust and tailpipe.




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