Carl F. W. Borgward
Encyclopedia
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
Altona
Altona, Hamburg
Altona is the westernmost urban borough of the German city state of Hamburg, on the right bank of the Elbe river. From 1640 to 1864 Altona was under the administration of the Danish monarchy. Altona was an independent city until 1937...
- July 28, 1963 in Bremen) was a German engineer and designer and the creator of the Borgward
Borgward
Borgward was a German automobile manufacturer founded by Carl F. W. Borgward . The company was based in Bremen...
group, based in Bremen. http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=de_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww-x.nzz.ch%2fformat%2fbroadcasts%2f.%2ftranscripts_140_86.html
Biography
Carl Borgward was of modest extraction, the son of a coal retailer, Wilhelm Borgward, and had twelve brothers and sisters. He undertook mechanical engineering studies, and obtained his engineering diploma in 1913.He was wounded during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. In 1919 he became one of the partners of Bremer Reifenindustrie. The company was restructured and in 1920 became Bremer Kühlerfabrik Borgward & Co.
In 1924 and 1925 the company started to produce the small three-wheel trucks Blitzkarren and Goliath. With his partner Wilhelm Tecklenburg, in 1928 he created the company Goliath-Werke Borgward & Co. When the two associates took over Hansa-Lloyd-Werke in 1931, this became the Borgward
Borgward
Borgward was a German automobile manufacturer founded by Carl F. W. Borgward . The company was based in Bremen...
Group.
On September 23, 1938, the Carl F. W. Borgward Automobil- und Motorenwerke factory was opened in Sebaldsbrück near Bremen. At that time, 22,000 people were working in the company. Till the end of the war the production of Borgward was mostly military vehicles and trucks.
When the factory was destroyed by bombing in 1944, half of the workers were prisoners of war and forced laborers. Carl Borgward was interned till 1948. Finally, just one year after being freed, he was already again member of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Bremen.
In 1949, the first Lloyd
Lloyd (car)
Norddeutsche Automobil und Motoren GmbH was a German brand created in 1908 and was owned by the Norddeutsche Lloyd shipping company. The factory was in Bremen...
LP 300 had been designed and produced. In Germany this car was nicknamed the Leukoplastbomber (Band-aid Bomber). The small car with a plywood body on a wooden chassis had a two-stroke engine
Two-stroke cycle
A two-stroke engine is an internal combustion engine that completes the process cycle in one revolution of the crankshaft...
and was in the market segment under the Volkswagen Beetle
Volkswagen Beetle
The Volkswagen Type 1, widely known as the Volkswagen Beetle or Volkswagen Bug, is an economy car produced by the German auto maker Volkswagen from 1938 until 2003...
, and kept this position for more than a decade.
In 1949 Borgward had also presented the large Hansa
Hansa (car)
Hansa was a German car brand, which was part of the Borgward group. Hansa was based in Bremen.The Hansa-Lloyd company, in the Bremen suburb as Hastedt, had been established as a car and truck makers since 1905....
sedan, which was the first European car with a pontoon body. He had taken ideas from American magazines, which he read when under detention.
The largest success came in 1954 with the Borgward Isabella
Borgward Isabella
The Borgward Isabella was a medium-sized, two-door saloon manufactured by the Bremen based auto-manufacturer Carl F. W. Borgward GmbH from 1954-1962...
. The Borgwards met the spirit of the time: the German customers wished for American type styling and rich chrome decoration with European compact dimensions. Borgward participated in detail in the design of all the car models.
Increased competition on the segment of mid-sized cars, and the too broad and uneconomical range of models, as well as wrong financial and tactical choices by the management, led the company into crisis at the end of the fifties. The new model Borgward-Lloyd Arabella should have eased the difficulties, but it was handicapped by quality problems.
In 1961, Borgward was one of the most spectacular bankruptcies in the history of Germany. The company went to the Land of Bremen, which had it liquidated, and part of the factory went to Hanomag
Hanomag
Hanomag was a German producer of steam locomotives, tractors, trucks and military vehicles. Hanomag first achieved international fame by delivering a large number of steam locomotives to Romania and Bulgaria before World War I....
. Years after the bankruptcy was closed, it came out that it had not been reasonable: all debts were paid to the last cent.
Carl Borgward died of an infarctus at the age 72 on July 28, 1963.
His life work might continue: 50 years after closing down there are new plans from his grandson to resume building cars under the name of Borgward.