FEATURE - 1962 Volkswagen Kombi custom
Words: Mike Ryan
Photos: Courtesy of Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles
To get around alpine regions, a snowmobile is usually the answer. But what if you want some weather protection and comfort, as well as the ability to carry more than one or two people? Decades ago, a clever mechanic came up with the answer.
While it looks like it would be ideal for negotiating the slopes around Mt. Buller or Falls Creek this ski season, what you see here was made in Austria, not Australia. Its creator, a mechanic and inventor by the name of Kurt Kretzner, was also a keen skier and it’s that passion that led to this vehicle coming into being.
Back in the early 1960s, Kretzner noted that there was no van in the market that combined genuine off-road capability with ease of use. Kretzner believed that a vehicle that combined those attributes would be suitable not just for skiers, but also other outdoor leisure pursuits, with commercial applications, too.
“An ideal helper for everyone,” Kretzner later wrote, “mountain hut keepers, hunters, foresters, doctors and maintenance engineers for ski-lifts, TV and radio masts, pipelines and the like.
“I couldn’t find the vehicle I was dreaming of. So, I decided to build it myself.”
VW with a Difference
Volkswagen’s Type 2 Transporter, aka Bulli, aka Kombi, fulfilled one half of Kretzner’s vision, being easy to drive, but it lacked any sort of off-road capability. Remember, this was back in the early 1960s, almost two decades before the ‘Syncro’ four-wheel drive version was released.
Exactly why Kretzner chose a Kombi as the base for his creation is not recorded, but the VW did have some advantages, in being fairly simple mechanically, while the rear-mounted engine and rear-wheel drive gave more freedom at the vehicle’s front end for modification.
To a standard 1962-model Kombi, repainted bright orange to stand out in the snow, Kretzner started by adding an extra set of axles front and rear. The supplementary front axle was connected to a modified factory steering system. With both front axles steerable, the turning circle was just ten metres, meaning the Kombi could almost turn on its own axis. A rear limited slip diff aided this, too.
Both front axles gained an extra pair of wheels and tyres, for eight in total. Presumably, this was to give the front end a wider footprint and thus more traction in the snow than the skinny factory wheels (even with chunky snow tread tyres) could offer.
The supplementary axle at the back wasn’t driven, but it was connected to the rear driven axle via a caterpillar track-style chain. Like the rest of this VW’s underbody modifications, the chain tracks were of Kretzner’s own design and manufacture.
Made up of aluminium guides on the inside and thick rubber blocks on the outside, this gave the requisite traction on snow and other slippery surfaces, as well as for steep gradients, without tearing up the road surface after it left rough terrain for regular tarmac.
The finished configuration was similar in style to half-tracks used in World War II, meaning it could be steered off the wheel like a conventional vehicle, rather than requiring levers like a bulldozer or tank.
The dual front axles were fitted with 14-inch wheels, which may have been the wider units introduced in 1962 for heavy-duty versions of the Transporter with an increased payload. The rear axles used 13-inch wheels. All twelve wheels had their own individual brakes, too.
At the time, 15-inch wheels were the norm for Transporters, at least in Australia, so it’s likely that Kretzner selected the smaller wheels to minimise any body modifications needed to incorporate the dual-steer front and tracked rear systems he’d invented.
Regardless, the wider track created by the dually front end and rear tracks meant wheelarch flares running virtually the length of the Kombi’s body had to be added and the barn doors on the offside needed to be shortened.
Factory Power
To power his unusual off-roader, Kretzner stuck with the factory VW 1.2-litre air-cooled flat four engine that had been introduced in 1953, replacing the 1.1-litre engine that the Transporter launched with back in 1949.
Producing just 25kW (30hp), the 1.2 engine was hardly adequate to propel a Kombi in standard trim, let alone one with all the added weight of Kretzner’s bespoke drive and steering system. But, with most of its work likely to be done at a crawl, the vehicle’s listed top speed of 35km/h wouldn’t be that much of a handicap.
Whether gearing in the factory four-speed manual transmission was adjusted to suit this pace is unknown, but seems likely.
Kretzner put more than four years into the design and fabrication of his vehicle, which he dubbed the ‘Half-track Fox’ and promoted with a view to commercial production, albeit on a small scale for a niche market.
“The new, ideal, easy-to-drive Half-track Fox lets you safely and comfortably master all difficult terrain. Snow, sand, stony ground, mountain meadows, small streams and woods can all be driven through in this vehicle.”
Kretzner’s vision never became a reality, though, and it appears that just two examples of the Half-track Fox were built. The first was completed sometime in the mid-1960s, with the second built prior to 1968, when the idea was finally abandoned.
Fox’s Journey
Of the two Half-track Foxes created by Kretzner, one has disappeared, but the other has survived.
Seen occasionally in the years after its completion, the Half-track Fox was spotted in Vienna in 1985, then acquired by the Porsche Museum in Gmünd, Austria, in the early 1990s.
Later, it ended up in the possession of ‘Bullikartei e.V.’, an enthusiast group for the ‘T1’ (first generation) versions of the Transporter. In 2005, this group attempted a restoration of the Half-track Fox, but with their membership spread across Germany, co-ordinating people to work on the vehicle proved difficult and the project stalled.
At the end of 2018, the Half-track Fox came into the collection of Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles’ Classic Vehicles division, which operates out of a facility in Hannover where the vast majority of Transporters have been built.
Under the principle of “Erinnern. Erleben. Erhalten.” (Remember. Experience. Preserve), the experts at VWCV Classic Vehicles began a painstaking process of restoration that, even with the interruptions of COVID-19, took three years.
The Half-track Fox’s 60-year-old bodywork was stripped of paint, repaired, given a cathodic dip coating and repainted in a shade of matte orange close to what it wore originally. Exactly how much replacement metal was needed is unrecorded, but an image of the restoration in progress suggests the lower half of the front end was replaced and new wheelarch flares fabricated.
The VWCV Classic Vehicles team also got the vehicle’s mechanical components back to as-new condition, but for the interior, the team were allowed to be creative. As such, beech and pine has been used to line the cabin and fills the area aft of the bench front seat.
Along with seating and a table, the team installed tool holders inside, but those truncated side doors mean getting into the rear of Half-track Fox is a bit of a challenge!
The restoration of this vehicle was completed in February, 2022, just shy of 60 years since it rolled out of the Hannover factory and was delivered to Kretzner to make his transformation. That finish date proved to be the ideal time of the year to test the vehicle’s merits in the snow of a northern hemisphere winter.
According to VWCV Classic Vehicles, this unique off-roader made its way through the snow with ease and showed unusually good uphill capability, too, with the driver more likely to capitulate on steep slopes before the Half-track Fox does!
