RENN SPORT BEETLE

This 1975 Calypso Coral Red Beetle was bought from VEE motors in Edenvale. It has a strong air-cooled, Type 4 engine with a genuine 5-blade Porsche 911 turbo cooling system installed. It has the standard 71mm stroke but beefed up, with a 105.5 mm bore to 2.4 litre.  The engine build & modifications were done by Franz Czepek snr. ( This is a proper sleeper and can easily be underestimated). It still has a 1300 emblem on the decklid.

Looks as if the Beetle engine caught fire at one stage. The previous owner used high-density foam panels in the engine bay to cleverly hide the paint damage. These have been stripped off and taken back to bare metal and resprayed coarse silver. Both rear fenders, bonnet, right-side door & deck-lid have also been repaired & resprayed.  Both bumpers have also received a fresh coat of black paint & the prerequisite silver vinyl-tape applied .

We also fitted an essential metal SP rain-catcher, to prevent water issues with the twin carbs. We have sprayed the inside of the decklid silver and the inner side of the rain-catcher silver too. Its sprayed red on the vent side however, so when you look through, it flows with the matching red body colour. This extra little mod just raises the bar a little.

There are extra custom fibreglass panels made to facilitate better air-flow and cooling in the bay, as well as many, one-off shiny aluminium panels for the back of the firewall and side panels. Dynamat has been laid under these panels. The super dangerous and badly installed fuel pump, that was connected directly onto the coil, has also been changed. The juice is now supplied from the right side with aircraft-style fuel lines to the carbs and all electrics re-routed left.  The fuel tank has been serviced, fuel stop-cock installed and resprayed red.

I’ve retro-fitted a SP dash pad with SP style ‘Cockpit’ VDO gauges, but replaced the volt gauge with a more essential oil temp gauge.  I finally found two SP (Petri AG Sport) steering wheels and refurbed a good one from them both.  A lower front SP/Kamei-type ‘bib’ spoiler has been fitted to exact spacing specs. We are not using the SP1600 divergent free-flow exhaust system, so the rear valance will not be blanked-off, as my Type 4 pipes come straight out.

The center console, round the gear lever has also been retro-fitted.  New sets of front & rear stone guards,  door-handle plates and rear vents have been sprayed satin black and will be installed. Ahmed Hassan has masterfully re-upholstered a fresh set of seats with headrests, in red tartan fabric.

We have replaced the EMPI wheels with aftermarket Fuchs Porsche Targa-type 15” wheels, running 205’s in the back and 195’s in front.

These extra enhancements have been made and its been revamped into a SP look-alike/clone.

Doing these alterations & upgrades would not fool any SP aficionado or SP expert.  So, I’m calling it my Renn Sport Beetle and my Kamei-style over-roof decal/sticker is RS instead of SP.  (This was made to exact spec by Johan Locke from Primrose.)

I owned a 1977 ‘Silver-Cloud’ SP with blue tartan seats in the early 80’s but had to unfortunately sell it !  Still bleak about it, as I’ve always had a soft spot for their unique looks, especially the sporty dash with the tacho/rev-counter and the ‘quirky’ tartan seats.

These distinctive SP models were originally released in ‘Arctic White’, ‘Sunburst Yellow’ and ‘Silver Cloud’ and the colour range was later supplemented with a ‘Calypso Coral Red’. These 4 colours were lastly joined by a limited production of only 50, ‘Midnight Series’ metallic-black paint with a silver body stripe. All SP’s had ‘Antisun’ glass. These SP1600 variants (114Z Body plate) was produced exclusively by Volkswagen of South Africa. 

They are considered very collectable and were produced from late 1976 to 1978.    ONLY 3096 were produced in total.