The Troll was a small car made by Troll Plastik & Bilindustri of Lunde

Lunde

Lunde is a common Norwegian and Danish surname. Lunde appears as a place name in Norway, Sweden and in a number of Danish locations in Jutland and on the island of Funen. The word Lunde can be translated from Norwegian to mean grove. Lunde is also the Norwegian name of the Atlantic Puffin...

, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, from 1956 to 1958.
It was one of few attempts at car production in Norway, but only five cars were ever built.

The Car

The Troll car was made as a 2+2 sports car with a glass-reinforced plastic

Glass-reinforced plastic

Fiberglass , is a fiber reinforced polymer made of a plastic matrix reinforced by fine fibers of glass. It is also known as GFK ....

 (or fiberglass

Fiberglass

Glass fiber is a material consisting of numerous extremely fine fibers of glass.Glassmakers throughout history have experimented with glass fibers, but mass manufacture of glass fiber was only made possible with the invention of finer machine tooling...

) body. The idea was to build the first mass produced

Mass production

Mass production is the production of large amounts of standardized products, including and especially on assembly lines...

 car outside the US in this material. In the US Chevrolet

Chevrolet

Chevrolet , also known as Chevy , is a brand of vehicle produced by General Motors Company . Founded by Louis Chevrolet and ousted GM founder William C. Durant on November 3, 1911, General Motors acquired Chevrolet in 1918...

 made its Corvette

Corvette

A corvette is a small, maneuverable, lightly armed warship, originally smaller than a frigate and larger than a coastal patrol craft or fast attack craft , although many recent designs resemble frigates in size and role...

 in fiberglass, but no one in Europe made cars in plastic.

Fiberglass was a relatively new material in the late 1950s, and the benefits were many. It would not rust, the Troll car would be 130 kg lighter than an equivalent metal car, and the production would be significantly simpler and therefore cheaper.

The chassis

Chassis

A chassis consists of an internal framework that supports a man-made object. It is analogous to an animal's skeleton. An example of a chassis is the underpart of a motor vehicle, consisting of the frame with the wheels and machinery.- Vehicles :In the case of vehicles, the term chassis means the...

 was taken from a Gutbrod Superior and made 15 cm longer. The gearbox was a three speed Hurth

Hürth

Hürth is a town in the Rhein-Erft-Kreis, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Hürth shares borders with the city of Cologne.-Geography:Hürth is situated about 9 km to the southwest of Cologne city centre, at the northeastern slope of the natural preserve Kottenforst-Ville.The town, consisting of...

 gearbox.

Engine

• 700 cc straight-twin two-stroke engines made by Gutbrod
  Gutbrod
  Gutbrod was a German car manufacturer. The firm was founded by Wilhelm Gutbrod in 1926. It originally built motorcycles, and from 1933 to 1935, Standard Superior cars were built with rear-mounted engines....
  
   of Germany
  Germany
  Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
  
   with Bosch
  Robert Bosch GmbH
  Robert Bosch GmbH is a multinational engineering and electronics company headquartered in Gerlingen, near Stuttgart, Germany. It is the world's largest supplier of automotive components...
  
   fuel injection
  Fuel injection
  Fuel injection is a system for admitting fuel into an internal combustion engine. It has become the primary fuel delivery system used in automotive petrol engines, having almost completely replaced carburetors in the late 1980s....
  
  .
• 30 hp
  Horsepower
  Horsepower is the name of several units of measurement of power. The most common definitions equal between 735.5 and 750 watts.Horsepower was originally defined to compare the output of steam engines with the power of draft horses in continuous operation. The unit was widely adopted to measure the...
  
   (22 kW)
• Top speed: ca 130 km/h
• Fuel consumption: 5 litres/100 km (47mpg)

There were plans to change to a SAAB

Saab

Saab AB is a Swedish aerospace and defence company, founded in 1937. From 1947 to 1990 it was the parent company of automobile manufacturer Saab Automobile, and between 1968 and 1995 the company was in a merger with commercial vehicle manufacturer Scania, known as Saab-Scania.-History:"Svenska...

 engine, but these were never implemented.

The Beginning

Engineer Per Kohl-Larsen got hold of the mold

Molding (process)

Molding or moulding is the process of manufacturing by shaping pliable raw material using a rigid frame or model called a pattern....

s for the car in Germany - the man behind the design was Hanns Trippel

Hanns Trippel

Hans Trippel was the designer behind the Mercedes-Benz Gullwing's door, Troll and the Amphicar.Trippel was born on 19 July 1908 in the Darmstadt area and died 30 July 2001, possibly in Berlin. In 1934 he embarked upon a career as a racing driver. In retrospect he is better remembered for the...

.

The First Car

The first Troll car was revealed to the press in October 1956. It was not completely finished, but the form of the chassis was final. However, the car could not be driven. This car was later used as a prototype, and many changes was made during later testing.

Norwegian and foreign press showed much enthusiasm towards the project, and the car was compared with brands like Porsche

Porsche

Porsche Automobil Holding SE, usually shortened to Porsche SE a Societas Europaea or European Public Company, is a German based holding company with investments in the automotive industry....

, Citroën

Citroën

Citroën is a major French automobile manufacturer, part of the PSA Peugeot Citroën group.Founded in 1919 by French industrialist André-Gustave Citroën , Citroën was the first mass-production car company outside the USA and pioneered the modern concept of creating a sales and services network that...

 and SAAB.

The first customer got his car May 1, 1957.

Production and Bankruptcy

As the production commenced, Kohl-Larsen had to work hard to get a permit from the government to sell the car. He was only allowed to sell 15 cars in Norway. The reason for this was a barter

Barter

Barter is a method of exchange by which goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. It is usually bilateral, but may be multilateral, and usually exists parallel to monetary systems in most developed countries, though to a...

 treaty Norway had with the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 and Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

 to buy cars from them as they bought fish products from Norway. The government was afraid domestic car production would disrupt this trading balance. Kohl-Larsen therefore started plans to export the cars to Germany and Denmark. There was also requests from other countries like Finland and Belgium. At one point there were plans to build 2000 cars a year, but after some moderation they said they would be happy with one finished car a day.

However, the company was never allowed to sell more than those 15 cars on the Norwegian market. In addition they didn't get hold of the investment capital necessary to start large scale production. When the government made it clear that they never wanted to support the Troll car, all the potential investors closed negotiations. Hence, one of Norway's few ventures into car production went bankrupt in early 1958. Only five complete cars had been produced.

External links

• The Troll Car