By Keith Seume

In 1966, the american magazine Rod&Custom dedicated its cover and four pages to the Inch Pincher, a Beetle prepared by the famous trade mark. WHAT A MESS! VW of America began to apply pressure to Vittone to stop selling his EMPI products and, more importantly, the EMPI-equipped GTVs alongside the stock Volkswagen products. VWoA started to cut back on quotas at a time when sales of the Beetle were at an all-time high in the USA, effectively trying to strangle Economotors into submission.. By the early1970s, Joe Vittone was already starting to think of new business ventures and the EMPI empire was offered for sale. Once the company was sold to Filter Dynamics, that was the end of the GTV - the car that Volkswagen tried to stop. Volkswagen's belated response in the USA was in the form of cars like the Sun Bug - nothing more than pathetic attemps to boost falling sales. In 1966, the company EMPI commercialised a sport version called EMPI GTV. This 1967 version owns some typical GTV accessories, such as the logo and the BRM copies. More known in Europe under the name Ritter, these rims, manufactured in Germany by Lemmetz, were commercialised in the United States by the company EMPI. An early EMPI postcard depicting the original Inch Pincher and one of the first GTVs - a '67 Beetle with, in this instance, a set of EMPI five-spokes. Photo appears to have been taken in the parking lot at Orange County International Raceway. If only someone in VW's marketing department had listened to what Joe Vittone had been saying! But then "if only" are two of the biggest words in the English language...   All these informations on the EMPI GTVs story come out from the Super VW Magazine nr 98. This feature can be ordered from the shopping place.