Not A Cars Guy

By my own admission, I am not a cars guy. In fact, I am nowhere close to thinking about becoming a cars guy. I don't like dealing with them, I hate when things go wrong, I don't understand how they work and I don't follow what's going on in the automotive world. I can put a key in a car and make it go and that's about it. So it's understandable that one of the vacation stops I was looking forward to the least on my recent trip to Munich was the BMW Museum. My dragging my ass out to the Museum and the adjacent BMW Welt (essentially a massive showroom of BMW and Mini cars) was purely for my friend Bryan's benefit.

Having admitted I am not a cars guy, I will say that every so often a car comes along that I absolutely love. When I say that please understand my love of cars is based strictly on the design of the car. It has nothing to do with the performance, efficiency, importance, power or anything else. So throughout the years I've been driving, I have gravitated towards cars whose designs I love: the old Honda CRX (had two but never got the yellow one I coveted), the new Volkswagen Beetle (got a yellow one of those) and my current blue Nissan 350Z (not giving that up for a while). Other than those four cars, the only other car I considered mine was our family's old 1979 Buick Century station wagon with fake wood siding. I loved the power and mass of that car but little else.

I know Bryan loves his BMW. I am not positive, but the day he got that car may have been one of the happiest of his life. I have never liked BMWs. They all look like boring sedans to me and I can't tell one from the other. 3 Series, 5 Series or whatever...I just don't get the appeal. We sat in some BMWs in the BMW Welt that retail for over 100,000 Euros. Totally not worth it. But on my way through the BMW Museum, I actually found another car that I love and it is (or was) a BMW.

The BMW Isetta, also known as the "bubble car" was produced from 1955 to 1962. It is the world's top selling 1-cylinder car, with almost 162,000 units sold. The car was designed by a company in Italy that manufactured refrigerators, scooters and three wheeled trucks and licensed them for production in several countries, but BMW was the company that really made the car stick in Europe. There are photos all around the car in the Museum of families (or should I say couples?) with their Isettas.

The car is a two seater, just like my 350Z, but it is totally unlike my car in every other way. The two seats are actually a combined bench seat with a shelf behind for storage (so no trunk space at all really). There is one door to the car which is the entire front panel of the car. There is a handle on the passenger side of the front panel of the car used to open the door, which includes the steering wheel and instrument panel. We were fortunate enough to be hanging around the model in the Museum when a guided tour passed by (guides are apparently allowed to open the cars on display) and we managed to shoot the picture below.

This car is pure 1950s to me, which is probably why I love it so much. It looks like what someone in that decade may have thought of as a futuristic car, just like the Jetsons' vehicles and some of the furniture designed in that period. The shape of the car is about as un-aerodynamic as you can get and it looks like you practically have to wind it up to get it to go. I love the externally mounted headlights and especially the chromed accents, from the wire exterior luggage rack to the lightning bolt accent on the side of the car.

I love how life brings the most unexpected surprises sometimes. I realize the discovery of this quirky little car is not going to change my life, but somehow it makes me happier. In the four weeks since I returned home from Germany, I've checked ebay for Isettas and there are actually some on the market. If only I had an extra parking spot... Maybe it's time to move.