- Founded
- 1970 – 1999
- Country
- Germany
Buggy-Center Bieber KG began vehicle production around 1970 at Wuppertal under the Bieber name. Its opening Dingo and later Maplex, Optimist and Speedster were open recreational cars or kits built around Volkswagen Beetle floorpans—shortened for some designs—and air-cooled flat-four powertrains. Condor departed from the beach-buggy formula with open 1930s-inspired styling. Bieber subsequently developed TÜV-approved Fresh Air conversion kits and completed conversions for customer-owned vehicles, including Volkswagen Beetle, Golf, Scirocco and Polo, Opel Kadett D and Calibra, Ford Fiesta, and Porsche 924 and 944. Some jobs could be completed in only a few days while self-build customers received a kit and engineering approval. Approximately 260 Kadett D conversions were supplied from 1985 to 1990, over half exported to the Netherlands. In 1990 the company became Bieber Cabriolet GmbH and moved to Bahnhofstraße in Borken, relocating to Landwehr 62 in 1991. It added saloon-to-estate work in 1995; the Vario-Top kits for Seat Toledo and Volvo 440 were listed for model years 1996–97 at roughly DM 4,000–4,500. Bieber's last known catalogue listing was model year 1999. The catalog distinguishes the five own-body models from eleven donor-based conversion programs and does not treat every engine or trim of the Volkswagen, Opel, Ford, Porsche, Seat or Volvo donor as a new Bieber model.
Text adapted from “Bieber” on Wikipedia ↗ · CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗