looking to identify this Hebmuller, a rare one.

[peter schepens]

Hi folks; The search goes on... ever and ever but sometime a door can be closed. The heb mentioned in my first post is identified as Heb 730. It is still in the munich region stationed since the owner bought it in the early 80s. A friend visited the owner after some research and got to see the heb in detail.
It is the real deal. There is no trace that the front is replaced. No trace on a dash that is cut and swapped with oval dash. The owner was so kind to send me a box with 4 ordner maps, full with data from the car, docs info and picts. I made copys for my record and research.
It is clear that the car is involved in an accident but the picts I have seen from that acciden is not that bad to have the front replaced. Only front valance and rear is changed. To me it is 99% clear that this is an original Oval based type 14a. Most likely the car was made on a zwitter base. In the documents there was also a KFZ brief. The original one. I tracked down a previous owner who had the car in the early 50s. He told me that the car was bought second hand with the non-split dash, 1 glove box and oval grill in the center... Case closed. To bad I could not find the first owner.

The heb that is mentioned by HEBMAN is another one with oval dash and is still in Houston area . It is confirmed by VW archives as a type14a. The car is based on a zwitter body for sure. THe vin nr fits in the list from the hebs made at Karmann but was not mentioned at the moment the list was made. That list is made by Bernd Wiersch like 25 years ago and since then I found 2 other Vin nrs from karmann made hebs that are not on it but fits between some cars. Both confirmed by the archive. This one however, had no Heb body nr but a Karmann body nr. No trace of welding on that one so far. Thanks for helping the search. You can help on other hebs on http://hebhunters.org/
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Zelensis, glassfibre body made in Belgium , disigned and built on a VW platform About 25 body's built.
Hebmuller info wanted for http://www.hebmueller-registry.com/home.html

[Joshua B]

So, someone inform me so I understand the whole story. I was under the impression that Hebmuller manufactures their convertibles between 1949 and 1950. In 1950 there was a fire, whether it was arson or not is irrelevant here. After the fire Karmann assembled the remaining bodies, is this correct? If so, how long did it take them to complete the remaining orders? The Zwitter did not come out until November of 1952, and Karmann was building convertibles in 1949. I am unclear why Karmann would go as far as to continuing manufacturing these few Hebs all the way up to the Zwitter cars while their tooling was set up to produce their own convertibles, in which they didn't manufacture large numbers of at this point either? Could someone enlighten me?

Thanks.

[peter schepens]

The start of production was in June, both for Hebs and karmann. On 23 july 1949 there was the fire. a few weeks later, production restarted at Hebmuller in a metal barack - termporary factory ( not all was burnt) Hebmuller produced more parts as needed for the production as the spare part service need them in stock. Due to the fire, under inscurance and building a new factory, the cost of this new building and tooling was to expensive to be covered by the inscurance... altough the order book was still full, they called bankrupt in 1953. The remained parts and body's were sent to Karmann to be finished. At least 15 karmann made type 14a are known by me by the Vin -chassis nrs. It does not mean that these are still around but I know a few of them. And for the spare parts division, 25 naked bodys were made by Hebmuller. Just to have them around in case a replacement was needed. That is also why some hebs have not the type 14a type plate 10/14 but type 10/11 split plate and chassis.
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Zelensis, glassfibre body made in Belgium , disigned and built on a VW platform About 25 body's built.
Hebmuller info wanted for http://www.hebmueller-registry.com/home.html