Final Parking Space: 1959 Borgward Isabella Coupé
Last week, we admired a majestic 1984 Mercedes-Benz S-Class in a Colorado car graveyard, adding to a collection of Final Parking Space machines from (West) Germany that includes BMW, Volkswagen, and Ford-Werke. Plenty of lesser-known German manufacturers have sold cars in the United States, of course, and today we’ve got a discarded example of one of the best-looking cars to come out of Bremen: a Borgward Isabella Coupé, photographed in a self-service yard just south of Denver, Colorado.
Carl Borgward came up in the Bremen car industry, rising through the ranks at Hansa-Lloyd and selling cars badged with his own name starting in 1924. After World War II, he began building Lloyds, Goliaths, and Borgwards, with the Borgward Hansa his first postwar model.
In 1954, the Isabella replaced the Hansa, though Hansa Isabella badging was used for a while.
The Isabella sedan came first, followed by convertible and wagon versions in 1955. The Isabella Coupé appeared in 1957, and production continued in West Germany until the company went (controversially) broke in 1961. Borgward production using the old tooling from the Bremen plant resumed in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1967 and continued through 1970.
The Isabella sold reasonably well in the United States, considering the obscurity of the Borgward brand here. For the 1959 model year, just over 7500 cars were sold out of American Borgward dealerships.
The U.S.-market MSRP for a 1959 Isabella Coupé was $3750, or about $40,388 in 2024 dollars. The base 1959 Porsche 356 coupe listed at $3665 ($39,472 after inflation), while a new 1959 Jaguar XK150 coupe cost $4500 ($48,465 in today’s money).
Meanwhile, GM’s Chevrolet division offered a new 1959 Corvette for just $3,875 ($41,734). The Isabella Coupé faced some serious competition in its price range.
These cars haven’t held their value quite as well as the 356 or Corvette (though nice ones do change hands for real money) and restoration parts are tougher to source, so there are affordable project Isabella Coupés out there for the adventurous. A 24 Hours of Lemons team found this ’59 and raced it several times with the original drivetrain, winning the coveted Index of Effluency award in the process.
Not bad for a race car with 66 horsepower under the hood… 60 years earlier.
The Fistful of Cotter Pins team members were kind enough to give me the MotoMeter dash clock out of their race Borgward. The mechanism is bad but the face still looks good when illuminated in my garage.
The clock in this car has experienced too many decades outdoors in the harsh climate of High Plains Colorado to be worth harvesting for my collection.
The engine in this car is a 1.5-liter overhead-valve straight-four with a distinctive carburetor location atop the valve cover.
The transmission is a four-speed column-shift manual.
The odometer shows 55,215 miles, and that may well be the actual final total.
This car was in the Colorado Auto & Parts “private reserve” yard, off-limits to customers for many years. Then that lot was sold, and many of its former inhabitants were moved to the regular U-Pull section. We’ve seen some of those cars in earlier episodes of this series, including a 1958 Edsel Citation, a 1963 Chevrolet Corvair Monza, and a 1963 Chrysler Newport sedan.
The good news about this car is that CAP will sell you the whole thing, being a non-corporate yard owned by the Corns family since the late 1950s. You’ll be able to check out the famous radial-engine-powered 1939 Plymouth, built on the premises, in the office when you visit.
This car appears to be a bit too rough to be economically viable as a restoration, but there are still plenty of good parts to help fix up nicer Isabellas. Or you could make a race car out of it, which we recommend.
I like to use ancient film cameras to shoot junkyard vehicles, and I took a few photographs of this car (and many others) with a 1920s Ansco Memo.
This double exposure (always a hazard with century-old cameras) came out looking interesting, and the Isabella was an appropriate subject.
***
Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.
Borgward did such a graceful job of aping the Karmann Ghia body style.
There is one of these cars currently for FREE (not a typo) in the Florida Facebook Marketplace. It’s not mine, but it’s in my “saved” list. It’s stupid-rough shape, though, with the rear third gone.
This one gets a Masochism rating of 9.2
Found one of these in rural Lake City CA (closer to OR and NV than CA!) in 1970, and sitting right beside it was a Lloyd! Run-down, some flat tires; no idea what became of it! My interest was in a local back yard, a 1935 Packard 120 Business (three-window, suicide doors) Coupe, which I swapped for with my 1937 Chevy truck. It had 7K miles, an ex fire-truck at nearby Alturas, and was in primer; the farmer did it up in green barn paint! I never finished the Packard resto, heard it later got a hemi transplant, tho I had the engine (a /41) completely rebuilt, etc. “Life’s what happens…”
Opels, Vauxhalls, Taunus, Zephyrs, Dauphines, FIATS, Austins, Triumphs and lots of other weird makes infested the US back then. And few were sports cars! Most make the Morris seem normal!
Oh, there’s a Renault Caravelle rusting away in a local impound yard that I’d like to get hold of, but it’s been there so long that no one knows who it belongs to now. Missing engine and rear bumper, it cant be worth much. Plus, it’s the long-cab 2+2, not the sportier roadster. Wonder where Tesla got it’s front end concept? Caravelle! (Only the Renault is prettier!) IM Humble O
What an oddball to find. Unfortunately the climate got the best of it.
Always loved the coupe version, but we had a sedan. When I was a youngster (late 1950’s) Dad sold our ’54 English Ford Consul to neighborhood newlyweds and indulged in a 1957 Borgward Isabella TS. It became the family car and was roomy enough for three young kids in the back seat and the trunk was capable of packing in camping gear. One summer evening Dad took it out on a remote state highway to “see what it would do”. Somewhere in the vicinity of 90 mph a piston holed itself. I’m sure Mom was not impressed, but I can’t recall any discussions at the time (not in front of the kids). It was repaired and served the family well. It had quite a bark from the exhaust and I believe Dad referred to it as having a “Dutch”? muffler. Never could figure that out. Over the years there were suggestions that Borgward would start up again with Carl’s son possibly being the inspiration. I believe that dream has died now. I have a letter from Carl Borgward somewhere in Dad’s paperwork. He was responding to Dad’s asking if a floor shift conversion was available. The response essentially said that Borgwards entered in the Mille Miglia performed very well with the column shifter.
Seems like the yard is not even sure what to do with it. In some pics it’s next to a ’70s Olds, then next to a ’70s Camaro, then next to a late ’60s Mustang…
That’s a yard I’d like to wander through, if I lived in that neck of the woods.
Good-looking when new. Too bad this example was not taken care of.
Hi- Borgward is alive and well in many clubs throughout the world. There are several Borgward clubs in the USA. There is the national Borgward Owners’ Club, and the North Coast Borgward Club in Minnesota. My 1960 Borgward Isabella Coupé won Best in Class two years ago at the Ironstone Concours d’Elegance in Murphy, California. I have driven it out to California from Minnesota many times, about 5000 miles round trip without any problems. In Germany, there are several clubs with meets that draw more than 300 Borgward automobiles and trucks. In England, Sweden, Holland, and other European countries there are clubs. There is a very active club in South Africa, Australia, and I have visited a meet in New Zealand.
I saw my first Borgward in Billings, Montana, at a Borgward dealer in 1958 while in high school. It was a 1957 Coupé. I fell in love with it. In 1962, after Borgward was no longer in business, I bought a used Borgward Combi (Station Wagon) and drove it several years between Arizona and Montana. Body parts are not so easy to find, but mechanically, Borgward engines are easy to maintain. The same Solex Carb was used in Mercedes and the distributor was used in early Porsches and many Bosch parts are still available. I would attach a photo of my Borgward, but I don’t see a way to do that on this site. By the way, my classic car insurance is Hargerty.
My mother & step-father drove a sedan. Don’t know where it came from or what year it was for at the time they lived in a small town in Washington state. It was a zippy little care with a 4-speed column shift and a tricky reverse. I learned quickly to never park nose in until I had figured out reverse.