2013 BMW 4-Series Coupé Concept
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Borgward Isabella Coupé
Has any automaker gone from oblivion to success and back again as quickly as Borgward? Mention the name today, and you're likely to get blank stares, or questions along the lines of "Borgward? Who made those?" It's hard to imagine any European posing that sort of question in 1955, when Borgward had risen from the post-war rubble to outsell all other German automakers but Volkswagen, or 1958, when the Bremen firm very nearly nipped Porsche for the German sports-car championship. And yet, by 1962, the company was gone, the victim of a tragic and avoidable series of circumstances.
The Isabella was a bull's-eye in the mid-priced sedan market segment. Volkswagens were less expensive, but smaller and less powerful. Mercedes-Benz's 180 sedan had the sophistication of an overhead cam, but no greater top speed, and cost 30 percent more than the Isabella's list price of 7,265 Deutsche Marks. Opel's Olympia Rekord couldn't touch its top speed, or its all-coil-sprung suspension; and BMW had nothing between the fantastically expensive "Baroque Angel" 501 and the Isetta-based 600 microcar. On top of it all, the press loved the car. By the end of 1954, more than 10,000 Isabellas had rolled out the factory gates.
The Isabella had thoroughly up-to-date underpinnings, with a coil spring at each corner, swing axles in the rear and A-arms up front. The engine, a pushrod four designed by Karl Ludwig Brandt, wrung 75hp from its 1,493cc, with its relatively high 8.2:1 compression ratio and good breathing. The intake manifold was entirely enclosed atop the engine, making for a tidy design that could have been mistaken for an OHC. So sound was the engine that, developed for racing, it powered Cooper-Borgwards to many Formula 2 victories in the Fifties. The Borgward RS, or Rennsport, became Porsche's nemesis in the hands of drivers like Stirling Moss, Jo Bonnier and Hans Herrmann.
If the Isabella had a flaw, it was that its development had been limited, and early cars suffered from weak engine bearings and front-end components. Competitors started a whispering campaign about "die Traumfrau mit der schmutzigen Unterwäsche," or "the dream girl with the dirty underwear," but Borgward, unfazed, worked with its suppliers to iron out the bugs, and no real harm was done to the model's reputation.
Just as with the Hansa 1500, new models were quickly spun off the Isabella. In 1955, Borgward launched convertible and station wagon versions, as well as a hot TS ("Touring Sport") model with a two-barrel carburetor that could top 90 MPH, leaving Porsche 1300s behind. As the decade wore on, new designs from its competitors and a softening economic situation led to declining sales, prompting Carl F. W. to add the most glamorous model yet to the Isabella lineup: the Coupé.
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German v8: 1962 BMW 3200 CS by Bertone
The current market for classic BMWs significantly rewards the E9 series, which often fetches six-figure prices: it’s undoubtedly a very beautiful car, but it had a mother.
The mother, built by Bertone and designed by none other than Giorgetto Giugiaro, is even better equipped under the hood, at least on paper: it’s powered by the noble-origin V8 BMW engine, also used in the legendary (and very…
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1967 Frua BMW 3000 V8 Coupé
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Aquarelle sur papier Canson 320 g. format A4. Claude HERCENT
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2010 BMW M3 Coupé
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Little fins: 1960 BMW 700 Sport Coupé
Take a 1960 American coupe, make it 1:2 scale and you get a BMW 700 Coupé like this one.
Statistics say that just over 9,000 examples of this model were built by the Bavarian factory, but obviously there were much fewer in the USA: after all, the American who bought this car did it to have the pleasure of grabbing a specimen of German engineering designed by an Italian (Michelotti), certainly…
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