Racer Edge

It took 15 years to fulfil a vision – to create one of the fastest and most beautiful air-cooled cars on the planet

In front of Ron Lummus stands one kilometre of sticky Norwegian asphalt, otherwise known as Gardermoen Raceway. It’s warm and the spectators are amped, taking in the fantastic racing and the beautiful surroundings. Ron and the CSP crew are focused, fully dialled in for the next run. The conditions are favourable, perhaps even optimal. It is eight minutes to two o’clock as Ron inches the CSP Ghia forward towards the start line. Everything feels good – the team can sense it. Ron concentrates on the lights, every fibre in his body tense with excitement. His right hand rests on the faithful CSP shifter, the left grips the tiny OMP steering wheel with tenacity. Yellow… yellow… yellow / green! With a brutal jerk, the Ghia launches off the line, pinning Ron to his seat with incredible force. A 500-horsepower catapult releases its 650kg payload in the blink of an eye. The sight and sound is breathtaking. Like a demented beast, the turbocharged Type 1 engine roars and hisses forward, Ron shifting gears so quickly it’s barely audible to the untrained ear. As he crosses the finish line the scoreboard flashes up the result: 8.855 seconds – a new World Record! Never before has a full-bodied VW (a so-called ‘Door Slammer’) with an original magnesium VW crankcase and gearbox casing run below nine seconds in the quarter. The team are ecstatic. This is surely just reward for all those long hours given gratis to the CSP project. Even Ron does it all for the love: “I would never consider asking Peter for payment. To me it’s just fun to be involved with this project.”

Achieving that ‘eight’ has taken many years of teamwork, and much time and money. Peter Köhmann, the owner of Custom & Speed Parts recalls: “I had always dreamed of building a Type 34 Razor Edge specifically for the quarter mile. In 1996, when we were campaigning our orange turbo Beetle in the US I spoke with my friend Ron Lummus, one of the best known racers and racecar builders, about my vision. I wanted him to create a tube-frame chassis with integrated rollcage.” Through his Ron Lummus Racing (RLR) concern, Ron did just that, building a chassis with the aid of a donor Karmann body as a pattern. It was, of course, built to NHRA and FIA compliance, so is eligible to enter any professional race event, either in the US or Europe. Once completed, the chassis was sent to Germany where everything else, including the body, was built by the team at CSP.

1997 marked CSP’s tenth anniversary and, to celebrate, Peter threw a party at CSP HQ and the assembled guests were treated to the first viewing of the Ghia’s rolling chassis. A body came later, in 1998, after years of searching for the ‘right’ car. Having found it, Peter promptly cut off all four wings and replaced them with new old stock items. The front clip was carefully sand blasted while Peter renewed both the outer and inner sills. “I angled them differently in order for them to fit the tube chassis,” explains CSP’s head honcho. Naturally, much of the surplus metal in the under-bonnet area and engine bay found its way in to the bin. Though Peter wanted to keep the body looking stock, there are numerous trick little modifications made to it, such as the small welded tabs that hold the windows in and neat metal brackets on the a and b-pillars to fasten the body to the ’cage. Excluding the bonnet, which is made from glass fibre, all body panels are original factory steel – even the engine lid, which now sports an aluminium spoiler. A few coats of red-oxide primer sealed in the first incarnation of the Ghia’s body...

Fast forward a couple of years and the car was rolling on Monocoque Racing Wheels (3.5 and 7 x 15s) shod with Mickey Thompson slicks. The interior was finished – Peter and colleague Sven having handmade all of the step-rolled panels themselves. A single Kirkey racing seat, a CSP shifter and an OMP steering wheel complemented the brace of Auto Meter gauges and CNC staging brake. It looked finished, but there was still a lot of work to do.

In 2005, the Type 34 was driving in under its own steam. The sound of the turbocharged 2165cc Type 1 engine was awesome and certainly caught people’s attention. 500 horsepower is available at a lofty 9,180rpm from the original AS41-based motor. Deep in the bowels lurks an Engle FK87 camshaft, amongst other goodies, such as JPM cylinder heads and a RLR-modified 750cfm Holley carburettor.

It’s not just the engine that uses a standard VW casing, as the gearbox is a factory magnesium case-based unit too, this time built by Rancho Performance in the USA. Four specially designed gears, a JayCee spool and strengthened axles feature amongst other modifications. So equipped, the Ghia was tested for the first time on a drag strip in 2008 in Sweden. Ron Lummus piloted the car to an impressive 6.2 at the eighth (a calculated 9.5 on the quarter mile) only using part-throttle! At only the car’s second outing at the SCC, at Gardermoen, the team achieved a 9.11 quarter mile elapsed time. A very promising start indeed, although over the following two winters, pretty much every part was changed during the car’s development. “The race car is also our test car,” remarks Peter. “Many parts that we develop we try on the Ghia".

State-of-the-art technology also helps. A Racepack data logger is on the Ghia and, by means of sensors dotted around the car, 20 different values can be recorded and collated: clutch rpm, rear suspension travel, throttle position, engine speed and more. With every run an onboard video camera also records the car in motion and then, together with the data from the data logger, the car’s performance can be fully analysed and changes made to improve it. This intensive attention to the car’s development is in part why, after only 19 runs, the good feeling the CSP crew had about that day in Norway were well founded. The 46-year old boss grins when he says, “I had always promised the car a decent paint job when it ran an eight,” before adding: “although I never really wanted another show car again!”

A promise is a promise though and, true to his word, the Ghia was stripped and sent to The Paintbox in Essex where, in conjunction with the Prosign crew, a paint design was conjured up that is second to none. If you made it to this year’s VolksWorld Show you will have had a chance to see the car for real, but even then you still may not have fully appreciated the work that has gone into it – from the world record-beating engine and chassis combination to the first inside out paintjob we’ve ever seen on any car.