It’s Not Everyday Someone Mentions Borgward

This past weekend, I saw some friends, one of which had his parents visiting. These are people I’ve known since I was a little kid, and even though I’m now a man in, holy crap, my 50s, somehow, around them I still feel like I’m 14 and I still can’t really make myself call them by their first names. That software in my head was written long, long ago, and isn’t getting changed, I suppose.

Anyway, his dad mentioned how he had an uncle when he was a kid who was always trading cars. The example he gave was “he’d trade two Volkswagens for a Borgward,” and that, of course, really captured my attention. It’s pretty likely that he was the only person to bring up Borgward in all of North Carolina that day, an achievement for which, traditionally, the governor issues a special proclamation that comes with two coupons to a participating Shoney’s.

Anyway, since he brought up Borgward, I figured that was as good a reason as any to waste your precious time this morning by talking a bit about Borgward. The company, named for Carl F. W. Borgward, actually held four marques: Borgward, Hansa, Lloyd, and Goliath. Borgward and Hansa were more for the higher end of the market, Goliath was for commercial vehicles, and Lloyd was the entry-level option. I’m fond of Lloyd because one of their cars, the Lloyd Alexander, inspired one of my favorite charts that I’ve made in my career of making silly charts:

Ah, that’s a good one!

Borgward went out of business in 1961, the result of some strange approaches to finances by Carl Borgward and a lot of negative press; there’s more to this story that I’ll tell one day, after I do more research and get my midcentury German ducks in a row, but for the moment we’re just going to look at some old brochures. I’ll just say that Borgward managed to pay off all their creditors but still went bankrupt, which is pretty unusual.

In fact, they’re one of the rare companies that went bankrupt and out of business twice, as the name was revived in 2010 as a high-end marque but went out of business again in 2022, only having made concept cars.

Let’s look at some lovely drawings, though, from back when Borgward was a growing concern, in a good way, instead of a growing concern in a bad way, like they were around 1961. The Hansa here is a model name for a Borgward, and was a pleasing little bulbous sedan with an inline-four cylinder mostly just aft of the front axle, making it sort of front-mid.

They also always had a nice huge diamond-shape grille/badge thing that reminded me a bit of Renault. I do love this half-painted, half-outline thing going on here.

The Hansa 1500 was a two-door, four-seat sedan, the kind that Germans were unusually fond of. I’m not sure what Germans had against a set of doors for the rear passengers, but they seemed strangely reluctant to offer those. The French, for example, loved four doors, and even on their low-end cars like the 2CV, every passenger got a door. Volkswagen, on the other hand, didn’t make a mainstream passenger car with four doors until the Type 4 around 1969 – I’m not really counting the Kübelwagen or the Thing/Type 181 here.

The “ghost luggage” method of showing the trunk is interesting here, and they also show some luggage as yet unloaded.

Other Borgwards had fastback designs, four doors, and cavernous trunks with a separate spare tire compartment, which I’ve always been fond of.

The trunk showing-off of the Borgward Isabella, their most popular car, uses the stack-of-luggage-outside approach, which I feel is less satisfying than the carefully-packed-into-the-trunk method. But look at those fantastic taillights!

I love that near right angle bend to the top of the fender!

Here’s some Isabellas being built during Borgward’s final year, and there’s commentary about the whole bankruptcy situation, but, since I don’t know any German, I’ll have to just enjoy the uncomfortable vibes of it all:

These Isabellas were kind of pretty cars; it’s a shame they met such an ignominious end.

I’m not sure if they were actually offered in such an intense, grape-soda purple, but I hope they were. I also like how many car brochures of the era would show three people sitting abreast on a front bench seat, like any adult human would choose to be stuck in the middle there.

I think she’s in the middle there? There are Borgwards with separate front seats, too, as you can see in that absolutely charming line/contour drawing of the car’s seating setup in the upper right there. This one is a Hansa 2400 Pullman, the bigger, four-door fancy sedan model.

Here’s another Isabella, in a lovely mossy green. These were charming, unassuming-looking cars, though it seems they did suffer from quality control problems, especially ones built near the end. My friend’s dad recalled them as being total heaps, too.

Look at that guy there; his body language around the woman opening the door is a little unsettling.

It feels like he’s just sidled up to her and saying something like “You like opening doors, huh? Me too. You never know what’s inside, right? You know, I have openable doors at my place, too.”

Get out of there, Red. This guy seems like trouble.

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