Heh. Well, when I was in High School I worked for some nuts in body repair, one of whom crammed a small-block Chevy and a TurboHydramatic 400 into the heavily cannibalized chassis of a Volkswagen…(uh, not the Beetle but the nondescript not-particularly-sporty-looking mildly rounded off VW they made for awhile, what the hell was that called?) The floorboards were replaced with aluminum plates and Bondo, had a drive shaft housing intruding into the passenger compartment, don’t recall how the hell he did the rear end and wheel assemblies.
Are you thinking of the Type 3?
Yep, that’s the one! (Hmm, no wonder I didn’t remember what they were called, I don’t think I ever knew what they were called!)
They were (and still are) commonly called the fastback, notchback and squareback.
I thought you might be talking a about the infamous Karmann Ghia:
http://images.cardomain.com/member_images/10/web/250000-250999/250960_1_full.jpg
http://images.cardomain.com/member_images/4/web/376000-376999/376326_1_full.jpg
Nope, I know of the Karmann Ghia, and the car of which I spoke was actually less sporty-looking than those.
I remember the Chrysler K cars (Dodge Aries and Plymouth Reliant) with the HEMI badge…actually, just a 2.6 liter OHC four supplied by Mitsubishi, but the combustion chamber was hemispherical.
BTW I remember some ad lingo about engines that were Polyspherical and/or Orthospherical…what made them different than HEMIs?
Not sure what orthospherical meant, but polyspherical meant that the combustion chamber was comprised of two (or more) intersecting spherical surfaces.
If the intersection line passed between the valves, you had what’s also called a pent-roof chamber. If the intersection line passed between the valves and the spark-plug, you had what’s also called a wedge chamber.