Despite being one of the most popular cars in the world the Beetle is not a common sight on the motorsport scene. There have been successes in drag racing, a UK Beetle challenge series, rallying and rallycross but these were private efforts. Beetles were also popular as Baja racers.
Fans of historic motorsport will know of the exploits Bob Beales who still campaigns his 1960 VW Beetle in historic rallying.
The Beetle had been around for almost 20 years before Luise Piëch came along. The daughter of Ferdinand Porsche and head of Volkswagen Austria she gave the green light in 1965 for the establishment of a motorsport department. Her goal was for more sales of Porsche and Volkswagen in Austria.
What followed were nine years of intense motorsport activities, culminating in the golden era of Porsche Salzburg between 1971 and 1973. The VW Beetle, which at that time was at the peak of its technical development as the VW 1302 and VW 1303 with McPherson struts and trailing arm rear axle.
This support paid off and at the beginning of the 70s, the famous Salzburg Beetles stirred up national and European rallying. At the wheel were ambitious professionals who wanted to come home with at least a class victory. The fans were on fire for the silver rear-wheel drive cars with black bonnets, the red-white-red stripes and the battery of auxiliary headlights on the front bumper.
The motorsport department of Porsche Salzburg resided in the Salzburg Alpine Road. The race director was Gerhard Strasser, a former motorcycle racer with Norton. The heart and brain of the tuning activities was engine magician Paul “Pauli” Schwarz: His specialty: camshafts. The team also included seven hand-picked fitters and an apprentice. In 1972, the Alpine Road had eleven Beetle 1302 S in Group 2 specification.
If you wanted to get behind the wheel under race director Gerhard Strasser, you had to be Austrian and fast. Under his leadership, the Porsche Salzburg team achieved an impressive 15 overall victories. In 1971 and 1972, the Salzburger Käfer won the Austrian national championship.
The most successful year of the Salzburg silver coins was also to be their last: at the Austrian January 1973 Rally, places one to five were occupied exclusively by rally beetles, of which first to third place went to Porsche Salzburg. Strasser rejoiced: “Our boys are so blatant!” In May, a Beetle won 5th place at the Acropolis Rally. But there were also failures in Hellas: Harry Källström’s Beetle swallowed a piece of paper in its blower wheel, which first led to vibration fractures and then to engine death. Tony Fall, who was in 2nd place at times, stopped a defective crankshaft bearing despite dry sump lubrication – out!
The greatest success of a Porsche Salzburg Beetle remained the overall victory in the Rally dell’Isola d’Elba in April 1973, a round of the European Rally Championship. The winning car was driven by Achim Warmbold, who was pleased to note that his Beetle set the best marks on the uphill hairpin bends.
The final end of Salzburg’s motorsport department came in 1974, and hopes of competing in international rallies as the official Volkswagen sports department of the Wolfsburg-based carmaker were not fulfilled. On the one hand, motorsport did not fit well into the time of the oil crisis, and on the other hand, Volkswagen placed its future on water-cooled cars: the last Beetle built in Wolfsburg left the factory on July 1, 1974.
However, the Salzburg rally beetles are not extinct to this day: If you come across a black and silver 1303 S with the license plate S 26.301, you will meet the winner of the Elba Rally. And those who are followed by a 1302 S with the registration number S 117.239 can also consider themselves lucky: this example was also processed in the Alpine Road and is still alive. Some others are currently being worked on feverishly to save them and make them unforgettable for us. The hearts of the fans will then burn brightly again.