Goggomobil T700 (Royal)

The Goggomobil might be the model name, but the manufacturer of this interesting little car is the company Hans Glas sometimes simply known as Glas.

Without a bit of background reading, I might’ve not realised quite how old they were; in fact, the company dated way back to the 1860s where they’d been known for making agricultural machinery.

Now it was never an enormous firm, but what they did evolved and as the 20th century rolled on, they made seeders to be pulled by tractors or horses; but times change and the sales fell.

There’s a lot of history in the middle here in those tricky years of two wars and the depression which I’ve skipped over because we’d be here all day - but what do you do once you’ve navigated all of that?

Well, a chance trip to Italy for a farm machinery exhibition by the founder’s grandson in the 50s gave them an idea, and the idea? Scooters for the German market very much inspired by the new Vespa scooters. They called the scooters the Goggo and within just three years, they’d sold almost 47,000 examples.

These scooters are an important part of Germany’s history, because they’re some of the first ever made, if not the first made, in Germany. They were a great means of cheap transport for Germans and they revived the company coffers which meant they could move onto their next ambitious idea: a car.

The cars they made from the mid 50s, at first, fell into the microcar category and as microcar fans will know; they were big business in Germany - look at the Isetta for example!

From the mid 50s when the cars launched, they did pretty well. There were 150 cars built daily; with licenses to places as far away as Australia. Within a very short space of time, Goggomobil becomes a roaring success with over 280,000 units being sold.

But then, things unravel.

Enter in the Izar - Glas’ foray into the bigger car market. The company were ambitious forward thinkers and saw themselves taking a share of this growing market.

However, there were risks taken which took up time and funding. The first Izar prototype was designed with FWD - but when tested properly - it was realised it was a swine to drive and they went back to the RWD concept they were comfortable with.

The car sadly suffered from really iffy build quality and seemingly too many faults and many customers were left wildly dissatisfied. With a decent warranty on the car, Glas had to honour these errors and put them right; which essentially decimated a lot of the great progress and profit they’d made through their earlier successes.

But what of the Izar? Well first of all, as I said earlier, they made over 85,000 of these cars and the vast majority were the T700 which sported the 682cc engine.

The Glas 70 engine as it was known, is a 2 cylinder, 4 stroke OHV horizontally opposed engine which is air cooled.

It kicks out 30 brake horse power and a The Motor magazine test from the early 60s shows the car giving a 0 to 50 mile per hour performance of 28.5 seconds and a top speed of 66mph. This might seem slow to you at home today, but if we take one of Britain’s most popular cars of the late 50s early 60s, the Morris Minor, it wasn’t much spritelier.

We talk mpg later on and it’s a bone of contention. Some places quote 56 miles per gallon, as indeed does the sales brochure, but The Motor reckoned it was more low-mid 40s.

Interestingly and great for the time, the gearbox is better than you’d expect - it’s 4 forward gears fully synchro and it’s Porsche synchro system - which the brochure proudly states as a key selling point.

On your suspension, the set up is independent coil spring with double acting hydraulic shocks to front and laminated springs with hydraulic shocks to rear.

It’s ZF Gemmer steering and braking is drums all round.

And size wise if you’re trying to picture this at home, it’s 134.8 inches long and 57.9 inches wide, so that’s 3.42 metres by 1.47 metres.

But where is Glas now?

Production of Glas vehicles ended in 1965 and the company was absorbed by BMW, who then mothballed the name and have never used it since.

Which all in all, is a rather drab ending to a name with quite an interesting story.