Goggomobil

Hans Glas GmbH of Dingolfing, in Lower Bavaria, had made farm machinery since 1883, seed drills among it. In 1951 it began making a scooter, the Goggo, named after the pet name of one of Hans Glas’s grandsons.source 1source 2 When scooter riders began to want a roof over their heads, Glas set out to build them a small car.source 1 Hans Glas and his son Andreas drew the body with Karl Dompert, a former aircraft designer; the engine was designed by Felix Dozekal, who had been an engineer at Adler.source 1 Glas itself had nothing to do with aeroplanes, so the Goggomobil is no part of the story that the aircraft makers built the small cars.source 1

For most of its development the car was meant to have a front door, like the BMW Isetta.

„Aus Zweckmäßigkeitsgründen ist der Einstieg nach vorne verlegt worden. (Seiten-Einstieg bedingt bei Kleinfahrzeugen unbequemes Bücken).“

The Weiner museum confirms a prototype with an Isetta-style front door in the autumn of 1954. A few weeks before production the plan was dropped for two side doors, said to be on the advice of a family friend, the racing motorcyclist Schorsch Meier.source 1source 2

A real car in miniature

What Glas built was not a bubble car but a small saloon: a welded steel body on a pressed-steel floor, two doors hinged at the back, four seats that in practice took two adults and two children, and a fan-cooled two-stroke twin mounted across the tail.source 1source 3 It was 2,900 mm (114 in) long. Its 250 cc engine was sized so that holders of the old class 4 licence could drive it.source 1source 4 The saloon was shown at the IFMA in Frankfurt in 1954, and about 50 pre-series cars, without rain gutters, were built that year for testing and shows. Series production was due to start in January 1955 and to reach 1,000 a month by the summer; the Weiner museum says it began in April.source 4source 5source 2 At first every car was painted Saharabeige.source 1

By July 1955 there were 2,000 Goggomobils in the trade and more than 50 a day were being built. Cars with a 300 cc engine, enlarged for tax reasons for export to Austria, had done outstandingly well in the International Alpine Trial and other Austrian reliability trials.source 6 Not everyone was convinced: in the same issue a reader asked who could still believe in the Goggomobil now that the BMW Isetta had arrived and Messerschmitt was gaining ground.source 6 At the Frankfurt show that September the T250 cost DM 2,940 and the T300 DM 3,040, with a heater as standard and a sunroof for DM 55 more.source 7

„Es ist ein richtiger Kleinstwagen mit sehr beachtlichen Fahrleistungen … Mindestens auf absehbare Zeit hat das Goggomobil einen gesicherten Markt.“

Like a plank on the road

Dr Paul Simsa tested a T300 for auto motor und sport early in 1956, and called the scooter-car label in a sense misleading: it was a small car in which only the engine was close to the motorcycle. From outside it looked almost ridiculously tiny, but the doors, the legroom and the view were all better than he expected. Critics complained of a tinny feel, and the doors shut with a tinny sound.source 3

„Der Motor ist zwar gummigelagert … er orgelt aber derart, daß man in einem Grand-Prix-Wagen zu sitzen glaubt.“

He recommended the sunroof version for sensitive souls. The gearbox, with first and second at the front of a crosswise H, could be shifted without the clutch from any gear to any other, each gear going in with a loud peng. The car sat, he wrote, literally like a plank on the road, and could be drifted in a regular power-slide, though it was not docile on wet tram rails. It climbed a 15 per cent hill from rest in second gear, and 600 km (370 miles) in a day was no strain. He had small complaints: plain glass rather than safety glass in the side windows, an over-bright indicator lamp, a reserve tap worked by the ignition key and a driver’s seat that could be moved only with a spanner. His verdict was that the Goggomobil was clearly a small car and no longer a mere driving machine, and that for many people it was the only car they could afford.source 3source 1

Coupé, van and a long life

At the IFMA in 1956 Glas showed the Goggomobil TL Transporter, with sliding doors, for the Deutsche Bundespost, which bought about 2,000, and a new coupé with an electrically shifted Getrag “Selectromat” preselector gearbox, designed by Norbert Riedel.source 8source 1 A T 200 with 9.9 PS was shown too, but never went into production.source 1 The saloon gained a second wiper and external tail lamps, and wind-up windows in 1956 or 1957 by different accounts; a 400 cc engine became available in 1957, and the TS coupé, sold in Britain as the Mayfair, went into production that autumn.source 1source 4source 2 The first 100 Transporters went to the Bundespost in 1958.source 9

1957 was the best year. Glas built 43,372 Goggomobils, more than the 33,700 BMW Isettas built that year; among the small cars only the larger Lloyd 600 sold more, with 45,907.source 1source 10 The four-seat micro-saloon had overtaken the bubble car.

A successor, the M‑61, with a body by Josef Adler, was built as a prototype in 1961 and stopped the next year for lack of money.source 1source 11 So the Goggomobil went on. When rear-hinged doors were banned in 1963, Glas obtained an exemption to keep them, and only in March 1964 were the doors turned round to hinge at the front.source 11source 1source 2 In the United States, Continental Car Combine sold the cars from 1955 to 1961 for $995 to $1,495, with the coupé as the “De Ville Coupe”; 539 were sold there in 1958 and 579 in 1959.source 1

BMW took over Hans Glas GmbH with effect from 10 November 1966, and kept the Goggomobil in production until the last car was built on 30 June 1969.source 1source 2source 4 By then a saloon cost about DM 3,600 and a coupé about DM 4,000.source 1 With 284,491 built it is the most-produced German microcar, and it had outlived the bubble cars it was launched among.source 1source 12

An Argentine Goggomobil sold as the Isard appears in lists of the car’s licence builds. No published account of the Isard has been found, so its maker, its years and its numbers are still unconfirmed.

A group of Basque businessmen founded Munguía Industrial S.A., Munisa, in Bilbao on 22 January 1957, to build a people’s car in series for Spain. It signed an agreement with Hans Glas GmbH that April, built a factory at Munguía, in Biscay, between September 1957 and 1961, and, by one Spanish account, won the Ministry of Industry’s permission by buying the licence held by an earlier Spanish microcar, the Kapi.source 13

Production began early in 1962: about 1,100 cars that year despite strikes, 2,100 in 1963, 1,900 in 1964, then 450 in 1965 and about 550, all 400 S, in 1966. The range ran to T350 and T400 saloons, a C350 commercial and F350 and K400S Combi vans.source 13 Those yearly figures add up to about 6,100 by our sum; German Wikipedia gives about 8,000 and 1962–⁠67, English Wikipedia about 5,000 and 1962–⁠66.source 13source 1source 12 Talks with Standard-Triumph, BMW and VW came to nothing, and tooling costs and BMW’s takeover of Glas closed the firm.source 13

A works team led by Fernando Villamil won touring-category speed events at Valencia and Castellón de la Plana, and Salvador Cañellas raced a DKW-engined Goggo with a futuristic body, nicknamed the Ovni, the UFO.source 13 Nearly all of this comes from one unreferenced Spanish enthusiast page, which Spanish Wikipedia copies, so it stands on a single source. The other Spanish small makers are on the Spanish microcars page.

The Goggomobil’s engine outlived its body. Steinwinter GmbH of Stuttgart, run by Manfred G. Steinwinter, built cars from about 1969 to about 1987 for holders of the old class 4 licence. Its Junior put the Goggomobil’s 247 cc, 13.6 PS twin into the body of the Fiat Nuova 500; its successor, the 250 L, nicknamed the Figo for Fiat and Goggomobil, put the same engine into the Fiat 126, and in 1986 it was also offered with a small 250 cc four-stroke.source 14 Italian Wikipedia says a few hundred were built; no firmer figure has been found.source 15 A 250 L is on show in the Erfinderzeiten museum at Schramberg.source 14

Walter Schätzle, a Borgward dealer from the Taunus, bought surplus Goggomobil parts from BMW after production ended in 1969 and built a new car for the remaining holders of the class 4 licence. The AWS Shopper, for Automobilwerk Walter Schätzle, was shown at the Hanover Fair in 1970. It used the T250’s floorpan, running gear and engine under a frame of square steel tubes joined by aluminium nodes, clad in flat, plastic-coated steel panels, so that it could be put together with a hammer, a drill and a rivet gun, without presses or a paint shop.source 16source 17source 18 It came only in orange and black.source 16

Series production ran in West Berlin from 1973 until the firm became insolvent in July 1974. At DM 5,700 it cost more than a basic Volkswagen Beetle, and buyers chose the Fiat 126 instead. In all, 1,400 Shoppers and 300 of the Piccolo, a beach and utility version, were built; the Piccolo figure is less certain.source 16source 18 A Shopper is in the Deutsches Museum.source 16

Three German clubs look after the cars: the GLAS Automobil Club International, the Goggo- und Glasfahrer Gemeinschaft in Dingolfing and the Interessengemeinschaft für Goggomobil und Kleinwagen.source 1 No survivor count has been found. Of the seven cabriolets the factory built, the Weiner museum says two survive.source 2

In Australia, Buckle Motors of Sydney built saloons, coupés and vans under licence, and its own glass-fibre roadster, the Goggomobil Dart, of which about 700 were built.source 12 In Poland, German Wikipedia says, the Mikrus MR-300 was derived from the T300; no licence is recorded, and that claim needs care.source 1 At the sale of the Weiner museum’s collection in 2013, Transporters in advertising liveries sold for up to $172,500, though the liveries are not necessarily original.source 20