1971 L’Automobile Ventura

This Ventura features fiberglass bodywork produced by L’Automobile Distribuidora de Veículos Ltda. of Brazil mounted to a Volkswagen chassis.

The car was assembled circa 1980, and power comes from a rear-mounted and air-cooled 1.6L flat-four paired with a four-speed manual transaxle. The three-spoke steering wheel fronts VDO instrumentation consisting of a tachometer with a 5k-rpm redline accompanied by a 200-km/h speedometer and gauges for temperature, fuel level, and amperage.

The five-digit odometer shows 4k kilometers (~3k miles). The air-cooled 1.6L Volkswagen flat-four is equipped with dual Weber 34 ICT carburetors that were installed in July 2022 at A and G’s Autowerks of Ventura, California, along with a PerTronix distributor and a replacement starter. A glass-pack muffler was also added in 2022, and work performed in July 2024 included replacing the carburetor jets and performing a valve adjustment.

The four-speed manual transaxle was rebuilt in 2021 at Rancho Performance Transaxles of Fullerton, California. The chassis number on the L’Automobile tag shown above—3612022720—is consistent with a 1971 Volkswagen Type 3 square back.

The Ron Sturgeon Collection