Borgward Traumwagen
Weird Car of the Day #524: 1955 Borgward Traumwagen – Silver surfer
Imagine you're an automaker in the mid-1950s. You've poured a substantial amount of money into an all-new experimental car, featuring front-wheel drive, a four-stroke, four-cylinder boxer engine displacing between 2.0 and 2.5 litres (just like a modern Subaru) and an advanced lightweight alloy body.
Testing is going well, and you're preparing to show the car to the public at the 1955 Frankfurt Motor Show.
What could possibly go wrong?
Well, quite a lot, actually. Because testing a one-off concept before its public debut presents all sorts of risks, one of which is that you might damage the car badly enough that it misses the show entirely.
Awkward: this is exactly what happened to the Borgward Traumwagen.
The Traumwagen, literally "Dream Car," was developed as an experimental vehicle for a new generation of boxer engines engineered by Erich Übelacker. These four-cylinder engines used advanced alloys, including Elektron and Silumin, yummy, with displacements ranging from 2.0 to 2.5 litres. The larger engine reportedly produced 130 horsepower, and Borgward envisioned applications extending beyond passenger cars to trucks and even military vehicles.
michael banovsky
michael banovsky
Based on the Borgward-adjacent vehicles I've already written about for WCOTD, this doesn't surprise me.
The car itself was every bit as ambitious. Its streamlined body was made primarily from lightweight metal alloys, with a bubble-style wraparound windshield, an unusual multi-piece canopy, and exaggerated tail fins. There was front-wheel drive, disc brakes at all four corners, and a shape that looked more like something from the American dream-car circuit than a conventional German passenger car.
Really, test driving a road-going Zeppelin before its public debut is a lose-lose scenario.
The tiniest stray rock could potentially damage one of those enormous curved glass panels. The delicate canopy, the alloy bodywork, the towering rear fins—there's an extraordinary amount of unique and presumably irreplaceable material to worry about before you even get to the experimental running gear underneath.
Unfortunately, Borgward wasn't clever enough to first design an AI chatbot to diagnose braking problems while hauling ass on winding roads at night in 1950s Germany.
During testing in Bremen in August 1955, the Traumwagen suffered a serious accident, reportedly caused by a failure of its disc-braking system. The car was damaged badly enough that Borgward couldn't repair it in time for the Frankfurt Motor Show.
Our dream car missed its moment.
michael banovsky
Simca's dream car effort wasn't as impressive as the Traumwagen, arguably
