The humankind of automobile manufacture is rife with news report of pretended starts and mammoth descent . Fromhalo and concept carsthat flex off the consumer to manufacturer likePreston Tuckerplunging into financial problem , the motorcar industriousness has seen its just share of crushed hope .
In this episode of CarStuff , host Ben Bowlin and Scott Benjamin introduce us to a German vehicle manufacturer whose fib involve a self - made enterpriser , Nazis , potential depravation , buyback — and some really beautiful and forgotten vehicles .
Carl F. W. Borgward was a German industrialist who got necessitate in the railroad car business in 1919 by way of an automotive parts company call in Bremer Reifen - Industrie GmbH. That company would eventually become the Borgward company . He had no silver spoon to slurp from . His Church Father worked in coal and tolerate Borgward ’s 12 brothers and sisters . However , Borgward was keenly concerned in automobiles , and by the time he was 34 ( in 1924 ) he had bring about his first fomite : the Blitzkarren , a three - wheeled vanguard that was arrant for merchants look for a minor vehicle .
Borgward followed up the Blitzkarren with theGoliath Pionier , another three - wheeled two - seater .
The three - bicycle designs were n’t just for fun . They posed a cagey way for Borgward to bypass sure taxes . A three - wheel car was taxed as a motorcycle , not a more expensive motorcar . Even better , you did n’t even need a driver ’s licence to operate them . ( Well , maybe not better for those on the road . )
Borgward ’s cars became so popular in the thirties that there were calendar month - prospicient waiting lists to bribe them . But then came a footling job :
World War II .
Borgward was " enlisted " ( whether forced or not is up for debate ) to make military vehicles for the German war elbow grease . After the war , the self-propelling enterpriser in reality served a three - year prison terminal figure for aiding the Nazis — and came home from his sentence to find his manufactory in Bremen , Germany , destroyed by Allied bombings .
But he was determined to rebuild , and Borgward had some joke up his sleeve . Germany was rationing material post - state of war , so the management decide to split into three different entities : Borgward , Goliath and Lloyd , each with their own cable car imprint . That way each troupe could get their allotment of blade and other materials .
Unfortunately , Borgward might ’ve made a fatal fault . Each company operate its own engineering and purchasing section , intend that they were n’t sharing parts and resources . It takes a lot of cash on hand to develop every case-by-case part of every machine , after all .
That mistake did n’t have immediate effects , as the 1950s were a great meter for Borgward . The company launched the extremely popular Isabella model and new Borgward models , which featured some cutting - boundary features like air - suspension system and automatic transmission . By 1959 , the company reported about$158 millionin income .
But a1960 articlein the German magazine Der Spiegel sent the company reeling . The article reported that Borgward ’s segmented companies left them poor of cash , and disorganized . That caused the city - land of Bremen — whose ruling political political party was no fan of Carl Borgward — to deduct a loan to Borgward , and fundamentally drive his deal to turn the company over to them .
And who did they put in cathexis of the troupe ? Aboard phallus from BMW , a huge contender . The company was out of business by 1961 — but with all its creditors immediately bear off , which take a shit claims that Borgward was in unspeakable shape slightly less easy to swallow .
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