[ THE INSIDERS ]
The resurgence of the microcar reminded me of a visit to a German car and bike museum last year. My reaction to this trend – das ist gut ja?
Last summer while on holiday in Germany I nipped off to visit Zylinderhaus, a really fascinating collection of German cars and bikes over three floors.
One of the most interesting displays was a collection of strange and wonderful small cars from the Fifties, a time when companies across Europe were vying to attract buyers looking for a cheap but more practical alternative to a motorbike.
One reason these cars proliferated in Germany was because its aircraft manufacturers like Messerschmitt and Heinkel were forbidden from making aeroplanes, so turned to cars. In fact, as soon as Heinkel got permission to restart aircraft production, it off-loaded the tooling for its Kabine bubblecar to Ireland, and subsequently England.
Aircraft manufacturer Dornier also designed a bubble car, with top hinging doors at the front and rear, and an engine in the middle, nestled between back-to-back bench seats. Motorbike company Zündapp refined it, changed the doors for side-hinged and called the finished car Janus – after the two-faced Roman God – because the front and rear were almost symmetrical. There was plenty of space inside, but with body had no doors which meant it was almost impossible to get in and out with the roof up and a propensity to burst into flames hampered sales.
Looking like a saloon in miniature was the two-seater Gutbrod Superior whose styling and semi-cabriolet roof apparently inspired the Nissan Figaro. It had all-round independent suspension, a two-stroke water-cooled engine, three-speed gearbox, and front-wheel drive. There was also an estate and a convertible bodied by Wendler.
‘The Gutbrod became – with the Goliath GP700 – the first mass produced car with direct fuel injection’
Gutbrod’s chief engineer was Hans Scherenberg, who had been forced to leave Mercedes after the war because of his work designing direct fuel-injected aero engines for Messerschmitt fighter planes. Working with Bosch, he developed a direct fuel injection set-up for the two-cylinder Gutbrod Superior 700, raising power from 26 to 30bhp and reducing fuel consumption by 30 percent. The Gutbrod thus became – along with the Goliath GP700 – the first mass produced car with direct fuel injection. In 1952 Scherenberg returned to Mercedes, and in 1954 the 300SL appeared with direct injection.
The Gutbrod had an excellent reputation but it was expensive to make, and when VW dropped the price of the a two-stroke engine in the passenger compartment it was noisy and handling varied wildly depending on the weight of the rear-facing passengers.
Zündapp had bigger ambitions and in 1957 commissioned Pininfarina to design a coupé on a platform chassis with a Coventry Climax engine. It looked gorgeous, but by 1958 the company was in financial trouble so refocussed on bikes and scooters.
I quite liked the look of the 1956 Spatz/Victoria 250, a pretty glassfibre roadster with three-abreast seating, an engine behind the seats and a tubular frame designed by a 77-year-old Hans Ledwinka. Unfortunately, its one-piece Beetle, Gutbrod couldn’t compete. By 1953 it had filed for bankruptcy.
By 1958 most of these companies had gone bust or left the car market, swept aside by grown-up and mass-produced models from VW, Fiat and NSU.
Today the bubblecar seems to be making a comeback with the electric Citroën Ami, and the Microlino, whose styling apes the original Isetta, down to its front-hinging door. I rather like it.
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