There is a great story behind these wheels that Ton related to me.
Back in the early ‘80s Ton’s older brother and friends were autocrossing (racing that takes place on a farmer’s field) VW beetles, normally with 1600 Type 1 engines, but then one day one of the competitors arrived with 411 engined beetle and wiped the floor with the competition! At this point Ton fell in love with the sound of the Type 4 engine and set his heart on a Beetle fitted with a Type 4 engine! (Personally I fell in love with the sound of a Type 4 engine when I spent every holiday of my childhood traveling around in a Type 4 engined VW camper, but that’s a different story!)
In 1983 Ton is taking driving lessons and working hard in a garage, saving his Guilders for a Type 4 engine and VW Beetle, when a man comes to the garage looking to trade in his rusty 2 door 412. The car is fitted with some flashy ESAP 6Jx14 Grand Prix 7/70 alloy wheels and an engine that has only covered 25,000 miles! Ton and his friend look over the car and tell the owner that even if he doesn’t decide to buy a car from their garage, he must come back and sell the car to them! The man buys elsewhere, but sells the 412 to Ton and his friend as agreed, Ton’s friend gets the flashy wheels and Ton gets the engine.
After the summer Ton passes his test and is looking for a Beetle, but his friend says to him “Why are you doing all that work. You are big guy and when you are driving with the 412 you are driving something more special than a beetle with a bigger engine that nobody can see!” So Ton decides to restore the 412!! Hooray!!
In 1987 he buys his deep sea green 411 and after 2 years of restoration it reaches the immaculate condition you see now. At one point he had a beautiful set of steel Lemmerz Sports wheels on it (more commonly known in the US as EMPI Sprintstars); but wasn’t happy with the way these wheels looked with the standard tail down stance of the 411. This was later remedied when some Dutch and German enthusiasts got together and made a limited production run of 100 stiffer, taller rear springs, by this time however he was back running on standard VW rims and missing a set of sporty looking wheels!
Ton asked his old friend if he would be willing to sell him the alloy wheels of his old car and his friend said that he was the only person he would sell the wheels to because of the history they had! Result! What’s even better, Ton has discovered the wheels were manufactured in 1970, the same year as his 411!! The perfect 40th birthday present for his 411 in 2010! Unfortunately we will have to wait until the better weather before we see how it looks with its new boots!
Ton also sent me some copies of some period documentation that ESAP produced in the early 1970’s it features Gijs van Lennep the famous dutch racing driver who won the Le Mans 24 Hours twice with Porsche!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gijs_van_Lennep
As far as I know, ESAP eventually became what is now the Speedline Group.
I found a good german website that has lots of pictures of wheels that were fitted to aircooled VWs here: http://home.arcor.de/kaeferfelgen/
And another site that is under construction that is dedicated to the Lemmerz wheels fitted to old VWs and Porsches http://www.lemmerz.webklik.nl/page/homepage
Best wishes!
Neil
well done!