For a certain editor In  BMW in West Germany produced its first car since before the Second World War The  competed with and failed in terms of performance price and engineering excellence to match the middlerange sedans made by MercedesBenz The  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 postimperial Britain where there was no Marshall Plan and the Suez Crisis brought on the first of many oil shocks But Germany in the late s 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 MotorCoup 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 s with its Isetta minicar sneeringly dubbed das rollende Ei or the rolling egg The Isettas engine was in the rear passengers exited and entered through the nose of the car as if it were a DDay 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 didnt 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