AUTONEWS

German skier transforms his van into a tractor to climb mountains of ice

Volkswagen has never produced a half-track version of the T1 itself. In 1962 this T1 started its life as a regular version. The car ended up in Austria and ended up in the hands of Volkswagen mechanic Kurt Kretzner. Kretzner, by tradition a gifted skier, found it impressive that there were few vans in the mountains that you could use over rougher terrain. "I was looking for this, but I couldn't find the car of my dreams. So I decided to build it myself," Kretzner said in the half-lane sales brochure.

A sales brochure, actually, because Kretzner really intended to produce his creation. It took him four years to build the climber. The T1 had four axles, two of which could steer. Above the four axles is a kind of running board, as the wheels and tracks are wider than the T1 itself. For added grip, there are dual 14-inch tires on all four front wheels. There is a caterpillar track around the two rear driven axles. Kretzner did nothing about the power of T1. The four-cylinder, 1.2-liter boxer engine with 34 hp had to push the Half-track Fox over the mountains. You can already feel it coming: it wasn't very good. The maximum speed of Half-track Fox is 35 km/h. Just a little slower than a real fox can run.

So why not caterpillars on four wheels? That would have made the T1 much more complicated to drive. Thanks to the four steered front wheels, the turning radius is less than ten meters, making the mid-lane very manoeuvrable. All in all, it's an interesting concept, but unfortunately for Kretzner, it never got off the ground. In the period until 1968 he built two examples. On the third, he stopped production. Why is not entirely clear, but it is obvious that the public had little interest in such a T1 and that, as it was a manual job, it was quite an expensive affair to build a Half-track Fox.

As far as we know, this copy is the only half-track Fox still in existence. After being under the radar for a few decades, it came into the hands of the Porsche Museum in Gmünd in the 1990s. After that, the van found its way into the hands of 'Bullikartei e.V.', a club for T1 enthusiasts. They attempted to restore the halftrack in 2005, but that project failed due to logistical reasons. In 2018, the special T1 arrived in the hands of VWCV Classic Vehicles and a restoration project began immediately. The Half-track Fox in the photos is the result of this. The interior was also addressed, mainly the large amount of wood. A special project around a unique and quite bizarre car!

Autonews