When you’re a BMW buff, and also you most likely are, given the web site you’re visiting, the story of the Isetta. Occasions have been robust within the mid-Nineteen Fifties when the corporate was on the verge of chapter. Bike gross sales have been falling, whereas automobiles just like the 503 and 507 have been expensive to provide. The answer? Promote a automobile that would flip a revenue, ideally one which wouldn’t price a lot to engineer.
On the 1954 Turin Automotive Present, BMW stopped by Iso Rivolta’s sales space and stumbled upon the Daddya unusual metropolis automotive with a entrance door flanked by headlights. BMW purchased the licensing rights to construct and promote the automotive from the Italian maker of fridges and microcars. That’s how the BMW-badged Isetta Motocoupé was born, and never lengthy after, it turned a business success. In its first 12 months, some 10,000 models have been offered.
Between 1955 and 1962, BMW moved 161,728 examples of the so-called bubble automotive. A number of variations have been provided through the years, together with fashions with a retractable roof for the German market. For export, the Isetta Motocoupé got here with a set roof and retractable facet home windows. The UK additionally bought a three-wheeler model with a single rear wheel, and there was even a Cabriolet. To our shock, there was additionally this, the Decide-up.
BMW Traditional has shared uncommon classic photos of the Isetta Decide-up, a tiny trucklet with a storage tray mounted on the again. Though we’re a prototype, the diminutive truck was really offered to prospects. Consumers had the choice to order both a closed or open loading platform, which had a most payload capability of 250 kilograms (551 kilos). Not even Munich is aware of what number of have been made, solely confirming it was even rarer than the Cabriolet. The open-top mannequin with a material roof had a manufacturing run of fewer than 70 models.
The Isetta Decide-up was obtainable with 250-cc and 300-cc engines. Just like the Cabriolet, the Decide-up was solely manufactured between 1956 and 1957. The only-cylinder engine produced simply 12 hp within the Isetta 250 and a mighty 13 hp within the Isetta 300. Flat out, the little truck that would had a most pace of 85 km/h (53 mph).
So there you might have it. BMW technically offered a pickup lengthy earlier than these rad M3 and X7 ideas got here alongside, none of which have been even obtainable to prospects anyway.
