Borgward Isabella: briefly brilliant

By Martin Buckley

| 6 Mar 2026

Classic & Sports Car – Borgward Isabella: Munich values, brewed in Bremen

In a world in which there are very few truly ‘bad’ cars any more – but plenty of dull, competent ones – it might be difficult for some of us to grasp at first the significance of a car such as the Borgward Isabella.

The name is all but forgotten now, the owners’ club is enthusiastic though relatively small in the UK and the car itself looks to be merely a charmingly naïve product of the West Germans’ 1950s love affair with American design.

The Borgward Isabella saloon’s slightly dumpy shape makes for a roomy cabin

The visuals don’t give you much of a clue.

The white TS saloon pictured here is pleasingly shaped but not especially pretty.

Rounded and chubby, it teeters on its 13in wheels and looks like a mini Rambler.

The beautifully restored TS Coupé has the kind of blousy two-tone femininity that might once have appealed to a successful Reeperbahn performer, while the Combi (just 39,000 miles and mostly one-family owned) looks as rugged and functional as one of Dr Martens’ boots.

They all appear well-finished and solid in the austere and sensible way that, say, a Volkswagen Beetle of the same generation does.

Borgward’s diamond crest stood for quality

Inside, painted metal and chrome are much in evidence, as is the charmingly glitzy white plastic for the big steering wheels and stylish dashboard furniture.

In the metal, the Borgward Isabella is larger than you might expect a 1950s car with a mere 1.5 litres to be, with two long doors where four would be more usual on its British equivalents (there were never any four-door variants) and, in the case of the saloon and Combi, plenty of room for occupants inside.

When you lift the bonnets of these cars their four-cylinder engines appear lost, but there are hints here that the Isabella is something out of the ordinary because the unit, with its twin valve covers, looks neat, easy to work on and efficient.

And it is: 75bhp in high-compression, twin-choke TS (Touring Sport) form was an extraordinary output in the mid-’50s, achieved not by complicated overhead camshafts but by attention to breathing, with inlet ports that run through the top of the head.

The Borgward Isabella’s sprung white Bakelite steering wheel fronts a simple dashboard in this bench-seated TS saloon

Other detail niceties, such as a hydraulic clutch and 13 fuses to protect the electrical system, were rare even on much more expensive cars.

The twin interior heaters, the flat underside with its enclosed propshaft, the reclining front seats, the reversing lights, the inspection lamp that plugs into the cigarette lighter: all of these sound routine now, but were highly unusual refinements more than seven decades ago. The only major extra was a radio.

Get behind the wheel and you will continue to be quietly impressed.

These Borgwards have many of the characteristics of well-sorted 1970s cars rather than vehicles from the middle ’50s.

The Borgward Isabella’s free-revving ‘four’ feels like an overhead-cam unit

The high waistlines and big steering wheels date them, and perhaps the brakes feel a little heavy, but they are nothing like as cumbersome as their outside appearances might suggest.

They have an easy, supple touch as they move along the road, allied to a sensation of creak-free rigidity from their surprisingly light bodyshells.

There is nothing in the handling to indicate that the Isabella’s swing-axle rear suspension would ever be a problem.

Far from it: all versions take bumpy roads in their stride, with pleasantly light steering and a lack of wallow-inducing instability.

No olde-worlde trafficators here; the Borgward Isabella was stuffed with equipment, most of it standard

The engine is not offensive to the ear and possesses surprising torque considering the highish gearing, yet it revs out very freely.

They are not the fast cars that they seemed when they were new, of course, but they have a willing spirit that makes them feel nifty and interesting to drive where many cars of the 1950s can feel like a chore.

I cursed the impossible column shift in Noel Gordon’s Coupé, but realised that it was not properly adjusted when I discovered how it was possible to whip through the four synchronised gears in the saloon of Norman Williams and Tony Stokoe’s Combi wagon.

Club stalwart Norman is a long-term Borgward man who is also restoring a Coupé, but both Noel’s and Tony’s cars live in much larger collections of ostensibly more glamorous machines.

That they see fit to keep Borgwards in their exotic garages says a lot about this intriguing model.

The Borgward Isabella Combi is a chic little wagon with a hint of Volvo Amazon ruggedness to it

In West Germany the Isabella was a car for the buyer who couldn’t afford even the most modest Mercedes-Benz 180, but was not willing to accept the compromises of a Volkswagen or the iniquities of an Opel or a German-built Ford.

In fact, many Borgward owners traded up from Volkswagens. The cars were regarded as good value, and Borgward took only a slim profit from each one sold.

In Britain, ownership of an Isabella would have been viewed as an extremely daring activity a bare decade after the end of the war, but most people would have been more aware of Borgward’s existence than they would BMW because the marque already had quite a good network of UK dealers.

Plus a certain Mr Bill Blydenstein was making a name for himself racing an Isabella.

The Isabella Combi’s load bay is usefully large and flat

The model had carved itself a useful niche among well-informed and reasonably affluent buyers.

They had to be able and willing to take the massive import-duty hit (£476, taking the net total to £1426 in 1958 for a TS) for the opportunity to drive something that was so clearly superior to almost any other 1.5-litre family car available at the time.

With its relatively high gearing (18mph per 1000rpm in top) and 80mph cruising, it epitomised modern, autobahn-bred Continental design.

Voices were raised in disquiet as to why the British industry could not produce a car of such all-round excellence.

‘It is a really good car,’ said John Bolster in his glowing Autosport road test of an Isabella Coupé. ‘I only wish that it were made in Birmingham not Bremen.’

The Borgward’s ‘Flying B’ bonnet motif

Launched in the summer of 1954, the Isabella saloon was Carl FW Borgward’s replacement for his Hansa 1500 (the first all-new post-war German car in 1949).

It would have been known simply as the ‘new’ Hansa 1500 had Mr Borgward not given it the Isabella title at the last moment, although confusingly the cars were still badged ‘Borgward Hansa’ until 1957, when the ‘Isabella’ script began to appear on the bootlid and the distinctive front-grille rhombus.

Already in his mid-60s when the Isabella was launched, Carl Borgward was a cigar-chomping industrialist of low birth who had made his fortune building trucks and military vehicles during WW2.

The Borgward Isabella Combi’s cabin mirrors that of the saloon

His group comprised the Hansa, Lloyd, Goliath and Borgward marques, and, with his wife Elisabeth as the only other shareholder, Borgward ran his empire like a man who could not bear to delegate.

To paraphrase the Little Britain sketch, he truly did ‘write the theme tune and sing the theme tune’ when it came to making cars, and he was involved in the design of the Isabella at the deepest technical level.

Herr Borgward was an astute businessman who had realised that by keeping the four divisions separate he would be allocated more steel and therefore make more cars.

His Lloyds and Goliaths were basic economy models, but the Hansa and Borgward cars had upwardly mobile aspirations to satisfy West Germany’s increasingly large middle class.

The Borgward Isabella’s fin-like tail-light unit is carried over to the estate

The Isabella captured the mood perfectly and would prove to be by far Borgward’s best-selling and most profitable model, with 26,000 sold in 1955 alone as production got into its stride.

Its popularity would wane gradually, but new versions were regularly introduced to maintain interest.

First came the 400lb-heavier three-door Combi estate in May 1955, with its side-hinged rear door and a large load area of some 18sq ft.

The rare coachbuilt cabriolet version of the saloon by Karl Deutsch – introduced at around the same time – was really an expensive ‘special’; more significant developments were the introduction of the 75bhp TS version at Frankfurt in 1955, supplementing the standard 60bhp car, followed by the Isabella TS Coupé – plus the very rare Cabriolet – in 1957.

Progress is relaxed rather than brisk, yet the Borgward Isabella Coupé feels more wieldy than many 1950s rivals

The Coupé was – and still is – the glamour model of the Borgward range.

It had the same general dimensions as the saloon, yet somehow, thanks to its squat, slim-posted roofline and long tail, it managed to appear much longer and wider.

It was really a two-seater with a small rear bench for children or shopping, and it was conceived, so the story goes, for Mrs Borgward, who liked the look of the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia but for obvious reasons could not be seen driving one.

It had all the refinements of the saloon, plus new features such as parking lights, an electric screenwasher and a fresh fascia with piano-key switches identified by pictograms that were the origin of today’s all-pervasive European symbols.

Borgward’s twin-choke carburettor gave TS models 15bhp over the standard 60bhp model

Even in 1960, as Dr Carl Borgward’s privately financed empire began to collapse, the Isabella looked like a car with few rivals.

What other 90mph, 35mpg, five-seater could claim such a reputation for build quality and reliability?

The Isabella was by no means Dr Borgward’s final fling.

Hoping to grab some of Mercedes’ business, he introduced a six-cylinder model, the P100, in 1959 and launched it almost head to head with Stuttgart’s new 220 ‘Fintail’ range.

This Borgward Isabella Coupé is finished in striking two-tone colours

This irked many at Benz, and it appears that strings were pulled with Borgward’s suppliers to cut his lines of credit, just at the moment when his resources were at their most strained.

Not only had the air-sprung P100 consumed some DM30million of development money, but his new Lloyd Arabella also had teething problems, with resultant warranty claims.

The rumour mill dispensed grim stories of ‘bankruptcy’, and in 1961 Carl Borgward was forced to put his firm into liquidation.

He insisted that the manufacturer was solvent, however – not unreasonably as things transpired, because all of his creditors would be paid in full.

The Borgward Isabella Coupé’s Blaupunkt radio and funky switchgear

A final trickle of Borgwards was built in 1963, but poor Carl died that year, his heart broken.

He was not popular with everyone, and there is a theory that Bremen City Council and BMW were involved in a plot to finish off a company that had been bigger and more successful than the likes of Alfa Romeo and Volvo in the ’50s.

At least Borgward never had to witness the Mercedes takeover of his Bremen factory to build its vans and, in the ’70s, the first of its T-series estate models.

Yet the firm’s reputation lived on, long after Borgward’s demise.

US-flavoured glamour lifts the Borgward Isabella Coupé’s otherwise sparse cabin

In the late 1960s, when the Mexicans and Argentinians were preparing to start building Borgwards again using original tooling, the standards set by the Isabella remained hard to find in most mainstream cars.

Satisfied owners the world over were still mourning the passing of the late, lamented Isabella and struggling to find a replacement.

The closer you look, the better these seemingly innocuous cars appear.

In fact, I would contest that these Borgwards were the inspiration for the successful modern German car as we know it today, and a portent of the rational West German automobile that set so many benchmarks in the second half of the 20th century.

The Borgward Isabella Coupé’s lengthened boot gives it a far slimmer, more exotic air than its siblings

A car that offered no particular innovation, but an all-round competence born of sophisticated design combined with quality build and componentry; a car of substance that was not especially cheap but also ‘worth the money’ and not instantly obsolete; and a compact car with a sporty demeanour that promised engineering excellence, reliability and driver appeal in a practical, easy-to-run package.

The formula, in other words, for the first of the modern BMWs – yet the Isabella offered all of this in 1954, while the Bavarians were still lost in a world of unprofitable luxobarges and bubble cars.

None of the above is a particularly innovative line of thought (all kinds of conspiracy theories still swirl around BMW and Mercedes’ roles in the demise of Borgward), but it is an inescapable fact that, with the closure of the Bremen-based empire from 1960, the way was left open for the 1961 BMW 1500 saloon to slip effortlessly into the niche that the much-loved Isabella had vacated.

The rest is history.

Images: Tony Baker

This was first in our May 2012 magazine; all information was correct at the date of original publication

Factfile

Borgward Isabella

Sold/number built 1954-’62/202,682
Construction steel monocoque
Engine iron-block, alloy-head, ohv 1493cc ‘four’, single downdraught carburettor
Max power 75bhp @ 5200rpm (TS)
Max torque 84.6lb ft @ 2800rpm
Transmission all-synchromesh four-speed manual, RWD
Suspension independent, at front by double wishbones, anti-roll bar rear swing-axles, radius arms; coil springs, telescopic dampers f/r
Steering ZF worm and roller
Brakes drums, with front twin leading shoes
Length 14ft 7½in (4460mm)
Width 5ft 8¼in (1732mm)
Height 4ft 10in (1473mm)
Wheelbase 8ft 6½in (2601mm)
Weight 2381lb (1080kg, saloon)
Price new £1426