Volkswagen’s flat-four engine has been shoehorned into a dizzying variety of different applications, including gliders, tractors, bikes, dragsters, buses – the big, public service kind, not just Type 2s – snowmobiles, snowploughs and ski-lifts. Then there have been compressors, boats, hovercraft, aeroplanes and even one madcap scheme for a car that could both fly AND float. However, that never came to fruition… we can’t imagine why.
Such air-cooled antics were possible because, from 1950 to 1991, Volkswagen made industrial variants of its engines, for slotting into things that weren’t Beetle or Bus-shaped. It was, after all, a motor with a lot of benefits – simple, compact, reliable (and easily fixed if it did, heaven forbid, go wrong) and one that didn’t freeze or (usually) overheat even if used in inhospitable…