RUMCars Forum
General Category => Unusual Microcar Discussion => Topic started by: Nimrod Cabin on January 27, 2015, 09:12:58 PM
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Acquired the negative decades ago, it was from a professional photographer in Horsham, I also have some negs from him of a new Isetta as well, I should really get these printed too.
See 1959 image and then again in the seventies, all is now gone sad to say.
Richard, you did say more pictures.
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i LOVE the top photo, so evocative!
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Thanks nimrod but actually we have had that on the forum before and I can't recall who posted it , I used the search and can't find it . Whilst on that subject as you weren't a forum member in 2012 , were you an observer then ? , did you ever catch all the chat about Robbs of Wallasey a Bond dealer ? You can search for that and if you didn't then you would enjoy the topic - do you have anything on file about Robbs at Wallasey or Birkenhead ?
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I thought it looked familiar! Quite happy to se it again though.
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Oh absolutely ! I love to see these photos thanks all :)
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Nice photo. Hope you don't mind, I shared it on the BMW Isetta page on facebook. I credited the RUM forum.
Interesting looking at the basic model Isetta on the far left of the picture, does it look to anyone else that it had a non standard wipe blade on it? I'm assuming it was a new car, can't see any plates on it.
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Yes, it does look longer than those on the other Isettas - but that may be an optical illusion, as our eyes include the other black background bits at each end?
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our Isetta has tandem wipers , it says wipac on the blades and arms , but according to wipac they arn't theirs , the coupling bar is slim chrome with miniature clevis/pin type joint .
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Never knew the make of the original wipers, although I was pretty sure the wipers were of German origin, as they're one of the few items of external trim that matches up with the German and U.S cars. I have a pair which I picked up at various points when sourcing the missing bits from my car. One has an original wiper blade, although my car being a left hooker only requires a single wiper fitted.
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ours is a LHD ex showroom model , and been with us since the mid 1970's , regesterd 1st to the garage/agency that sold them , and on No1 reg , says brighton on the idiot plate , have managed to source a new tandem wiper arangement (new stock from ex dealer) but its horible grey spray paint , will keep it as running spares .
(that apart its not my idea of transport - not as reliable as the Bond)
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Takes all sorts. Never really been a fan of Bonds or any of the British micro car designs, although I've always been fond of Morgan aero style trikes and I like mini's, although neither can be categorized as a micro cars.
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I never would have described either of my Isetta's as unreliable though. The Bonds never let me down either. Two very different animals. I guess with any car reliability is often down to proper maintenance.
My current Isetta has a TEX wiper. Don't suppose its original though.
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Also I think depends a lot on how you drive them. Drive a car hard and you'll break it no matter how how well built it is.
A lot of micro cars were driven flat out, with engine speeds equivalent to a more conventional car being driven at ton-up speeds.
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Again this where the German mentality deviates from the British. The Brits made cars that were 'capable' of 80 miles an hour. The Germans would quote a top speed of 70 miles an hour. Take a classic Mini 850/1000, for instance, stick it on the Autobahn and do 80 and it will fall apart. It is actually designed to poddle about at 50 to 55 mph. Take the German NSU of 600cc and it will happily cruise at 70 plus mph all day, it was built to do this.
So a schmitt will drive near flat out for ages, where as most of the British stuff really only offers its top speed for overtaking. Delightfully, good owners are able to extract fuller performance, by their attention to detail. My Goggo 300 with its best spec engine and 400 gearing was only just able to stay in front of Andy Price's Bond twin. Great fun it was too. Without the change of gearing he would have been down the road. I was impressed. The challenge in use is to build the reliability into the car. The German's Autobahns made them put their money where their mouth is. Stuff that could not cope was of no use to most German buyers.
However any small engine working hard pays. Even today Smarts have a reputation for hitting 50K and trouble. So many Isetta, Trienkel and Schmitt speedos show 45k to 55k when found mothballed. I never paid so much attention to Bonds, Berks and the like. Certainly Bonds belied their construction. Well into the '70's a builder/plumber type guy ran an Estate round the Swindon area. It was rarely unloaded, yet manfully did its duty, till replaced by a Regal Van.
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My Dad drove a lot of miles in bubbles, he owned a KR200 which he toured France in with Peter Green. Only issue was a broken carburettor spring, which was fixed with a large washer.
The following year they drove to Gibraltar in Peter's Heinkel. This turned out be a bit of a stretch, they covered the 3500 mile round trip in a fortnight. My Dad says they never seemed to stop driving which I think frayed tempers at times. No mechanical problems apart from a bent trackrod which wore a tyre out and battery acid burning holes through their tent when Peter turned it over into a ditch in Spain, almost decapitating my Dad in the process who was shooting cine film at the time out of the sunroof !
The cruising speed was always kept at about 40mph, and that sounds about right, especially where four strokes are concerned. Two strokes can handle more abuse I think, being very simple engine designs. Vic Locke and Brian Westoby, both Isetta high milers in their day said the same thing- 40mph, with maybe the occasional burst to 45mph.
My Mini 1000's were always happy at motorway speeds, especially if they have 3.1:1 final drive ratio as fitted to post '84 cars. A stage 1 kit is a cost effective investment and really opens up the engine and lets it breath. Mine certainly never fell apart- you must have been driving some pretty clapped out mini's if that was your experience. My main gripe was the quality of the seals on brakes and pot joints- always going home, and I bought the best available, not cheap pattern parts.
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The Mick Leeson era Trienkels would cruise at 50 on the clock, so about 46/7 in reality. This is consistent with being able to use the Autobahn, as if you are driving to slowly they will chuck you off. But yes, on ordinary roads you rarely got the chance to do that. My experience is a Trienkel is faster over the ground. However I think they are more challenging to get right and possibly to drive.
A 1000cc Mini could not keep up with a 1000cc NSU on the straight and narrow. Admittedly that is a slightly later design, but BMC had had the chance to review the design and get a few niggles out of the Mini by then. The years of the later Mini saw Coopers and such offering more speed. As I have said, the Minis trick was in its handling. It was never a happy motorway car, but in its element in the lanes. There top speed was not so much the important thing. Just like the Saab Bullnose, sure footed predictability is more effective.
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Found this on a Facebook group
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What a coincidence. The very same Blue Bell garage in Middlesbrough that Plas Man mentioned in the 'Bond thread' only a few days ago.
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Nice picture!
I have suddenly realised why I like these photos...I don't think I ever saw bubble cars and micros for sale in British garages.
In 1957 when I was 2 we moved to Montevideo and returned to UK Christmas 1962, then 18 months later moved to Washington D.C. for 4 1/2 years, so was out of the country for most of the time that scenes like these were relatively common.
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Okay so you are two years older than I am . I have never lived further than 10 miles away but never was aware of micros at all until about 1980 !! Despite being interested in and owning classic bikes since mid 70's . I suppose I live in a relatively well off area and they were very uncommon indeed I suppose .
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I'm the same age as Marcus and dont remember ever seeing bubblecars/microcars for sale new as a child so it was a treat to see that photo but do remember seeing them for sale second hand mainly at motorcycle shops like Eddy Grimsteads and also at our local Reliant dealership Romford Market Garage where owners had part exchanged them in for new Reliants. My dad was a Reliant man. Bought my first bubblecar in 1971 but that was from where most people looked in those days, the good old Exchange and Mart! Paid a tenner which was a weeks wages for me at the time as a young barristers clerk.
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Indeed I remember the motorcycle/Reliant dealers selling the few remaining trade microcars from their forecourts. Job to remember names now. George White's in Swindon? Hammond's in Cirencester, where our nearest VW agent was, just up the road. In Eastville, Bristol, there was another, name forgotten, but he really got into Bond Bugs. Depending on the home game, the cars were put away on Sat afternoons to stop football fans turning the cars over on their way out of Bristol Rover's ground. Portsmouth v Bristol was always trouble, for instance. It was under the roundabout next to the Eastville stadium that we found a vandalised Isetta. No idea of its story but bit by bit it was taken back to school and some went to Dr Thresher and the rest to Phil Lomax, who both ran Isettas.
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I'm guessing that with production of most microcars finishing in the early to mid sixties, it would have been perhaps 1966-67 at the latest to find a new car in a showroom.
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We returned from idyllic sub-tropical Montevideo in the dreadful winter of 62/63 and spent 3 freezing months in an unheated Summer House, clinker-built with daylight visible between the planks. It was on the coastal Salterns salt marshes near Lymington, Hants. We then moved to a small unheated house on top of a windy hill in the middle of nowhere, Kent. Not many car dealers around those places!
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There are a few D reg cars where they sat unsold for a long period. Reality is that the bubblecar period was pretty short really. Watching films they appear in the street scenes, sometimes as major props, from about '55. Soon they a relegated to being in the background. By '65 they rarely appear even in street scenes. I re-watched Lindsey Anderson's 'If' recently. Partly as it was to be filmed at our school till the plot was discovered. The school regime it depicts was only partially unravelled when I went to school. It could be pretty barbaric. Anyway, in the bit where they cope off school and nick a motorcycle, there in the road is an Isetta. That was 1967, film released in 1968. Not sure where that was filmed. It might have been Bristol. The school location ebnded up at Cambridge so much was shot over there. Such was the budget that old footage could not be thrown away though. They could not even afford to film entirely in colour! So it chops from colour to black and white.
I know where the dealers were for microcars round here. I cannot recall any with new stock. Some put through trade ins. In Oxford the trade diverted to Eynsham as Basil set up as an independent. It was on the back of him that Waste did bubblecars, stealing his business, and good name, by having a better position on a main road. It was Waste who had a Peel and other goodies in the yard, later rescued, as he was not a pleseant guy. He scrapped a huge pile of engines rather than sell them off. Many of the cars there died too.
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I think it was the change in purchase tax laws in 1962 that really affected sales of small three wheelers, motorcycles too.
A reduction for four wheelers from 55% down to 25%, that same as three wheel cars under a certain weight, must have made sales difficult when you could get a mini or maybe even something like a Ford Cortina or Anglia.
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We returned from idyllic sub-tropical Montevideo in the dreadful winter of 62/63 and spent 3 freezing months in an unheated Summer House, clinker-built with daylight visible between the planks. It was on the coastal Salterns salt marshes near Lymington, Hants. We then moved to a small unheated house on top of a windy hill in the middle of nowhere, Kent. Not many car dealers around those places!
You poor little lad! Is that why you took up drumming? To keep warm? :)
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It was really miserable...what a "welcome home'! Carnival samba drumming in Montevideo set me off. We did see a few bubbles down there, KRs, H-Ts and a few Isettas used by the bus company for internal mail and parts deliveries.