For a certain editor
"In 1952 BMW in West Germany produced its first car since before the Second World War. The 501 competed with and failed in terms of performance, price and engineering excellence to match the middle-range sedans made by Mercedes-Benz. The 502 was a still more dismal failure. In the years that followed BMW made every mistake in the book. They launched expensive new luxury models with temperamental high performance engines in a country that had not yet recovered its prewar confidence. They suffered huge losses, panicked, and attempted to escape downmarket by making “bubble cars” under licence for an Italian company, Isetta.

These cars had some success in post-imperial Britain where there was no Marshall Plan and the Suez Crisis brought on the first of many oil shocks. But Germany in the late 1950s was enjoying the fruits of Wirtschaftswunder. The country that had been in ruins only ten years earlier was no longer poor enough for the BMW Isetta Motor-Coupé, known colloquially but never popularly as “the egg”"

Extract from: Car Wars, Fifty Years of Greed, Treachery, and Skulduggery in the Global Marketplace by Jonathan Mantle

But then there was a fuel crisis and so, briefly, the Germans bought it. What a happy happy accident.

"The BMW Isetta. Despite its reputation for automotive elegance and craftsmanship, BMW laid a multimillion dollar egg in the 1950s with its Isetta minicar, sneeringly dubbed, “das rollende Ei” or “the rolling egg” The Isetta’s engine was in the rear; passengers exited and entered through the nose of the car as if it were a D-Day troop carrier. In fact, when the front door swung open the steering column and dashboard came with it. As for safety, the entire vehicle, front to back, was one big crumple zone.

Steering the Isetta was difficult, largely because its body was tapered towards the rear, like a wedge of Emmenthaler cheese. Most models had only three wheels, which didn’t make the car any easier to control. But the design enabled the manufacturers to have the Isetta officially classified a motorcycle and thus taxed at cheaper rates."

Extract from: What Were They Thinking?: Really Bad Ideas Throughout History by Bruce Felton