Continental Coach Work Pty. Ltd., was established to manufacture the
Ascort TSV 1300 at just under 2000 Australian Pounds, at a time when the Beetle Export cost 972 pounds. However, there are reasons to believe that the commercial planning was not quite so enterprising as the design of the car, and it turned out that the price was unrealistic, and so after a production run of a mere 19 vehicles, the line was stopped, never to start again. The whole Ascort enterprise was the brainchild of Czech born, engineer Mirek Craney, who had purchased a Karmann Ghia Coupe and decided he could build a good looking sports car on the basis of the Beetle chassis.
That idea would continue for many years, extending to the well known
Purvis Eureka. As a basic shape Craney started with his Ghia, and, by skilful use of his materials, fibreglass and epoxy resins, he had developed a car that looked every bit as good as the Ghia in his driveway. The body had double walled construction with a light steel tubular frame over which the body was fitted. The frame incorporated some very interesting features; a rollbar and a reinforced dash panel - exceptionally safe for the 1950s! The result was an extraordinarily rigid car, also fairly quiet, and very largely free of vibration, this being achieved by the use of lots of foam rubber on the inside as sound deadening material.
