SLIDESHOW
Germany’s long-forgotten car makers
G
erman car brands are among the most desirable in the world. But if you had to name a dozen, you would probably run out of steam before you were even halfway there. However, over the years, there has been a raft of firms that have tried and failed, many before the war and quite a few in the period just after it. These are just some of those that didn’t make it.
RICHARD DREDGE
Borgward 1924-1961
If you wanted a premium German car in the 1950s, Borgward was the place to go, with its stylish saloons, coupés and estates, most notably the Isabella shown above. Indeed, at one time, it was Germany’s third-largest car maker by unit volume. Carl Borgward started making cars under his own name in 1924, but in the pre-war years he also set up or acquired the Hansa, Lloyd and Goliath brands. This would prove his undoing, as he operated the companies separately in the postwar era and didn’t exploit the economies of scale practised by local rivals such as Opel and Volkswagen. The company closed down – controversially – in 1961 and Borgward died two years later. In 2008, his grandson Christian revived the brand to make electric SUVs, backed by Chinese money, but it struggled to gain altitude and filed for bankruptcy in 2022.