The Borgward Isabella Combi is a rare German classic

Borgward was founded by engineer Carl Borgward in the late 1920s, and emerged from the ashes of a declining business over which Carl was able to take control. Over the next 40 years, admittedly with a slight disruption to the business in the early 1940s because of World War Two, the company produced a number of models, including the Arabella, the Hansa, the P100 and the Isabella amongst others. The latter was the company’s most successful model, with more than 200,000 cars produced from 1954 until the business went under.

“I got it four years ago ad I’ve got sales data going right back to the start – I haven’t quite got the sales invoice, but we know who owned it in 1960,” Iain tells us. “It ended up in the hands of the president of the Borgward owners club well over 30 years ago, maybe 35 or 36 years ago. Interestingly he had a Borgward saloon, and a friend of his was racing it somewhere, and he crashed it. And in compensation he said ‘look, I’ll restore your Combi’, which is the car I’ve got, because it was 30 years old at that point and it was a bit tired. And so I’ve got a full photographic history of the restoration from 1988 and ’89. So I’m driving around in what is a 30-year-old restoration which looks like it was restored yesterday.”

Not long after it had been restored in the late 1980s the car found a new home in Swindon, but the new owner kept it tucked away in a garage for the best part of 20 years before sadly passing away. From there the car went up to auction and then on to a classic car dealer in Billingshurst, which is where Iain’s wife comes in. “I’d gone down there with my wife, we were on our way to see someone down by the coast, and we stopped because I wanted to see if I could get in and out of a Spitfire or an MGB or a classic British sportscar – I had a Spitfire years ago,” Iain explains. “And the Borgward was sitting there and my wife said ‘that’s the one you want’, and I’ve got a bit of a thing about estate cars, I love estate cars – I think they just look great, most saloons look better as an estate. So I saw it and I asked the guy how much, and it was about £10,000 at the time, and they’d only just got it a few days before at the auction. I just said yes and shook his hand – ‘I’ll take it’. I was in the mood to get something and my wife had given me a bit of a greenlight on that one…”

Before taking delivery Iain asked the dealer to paint the red roof, having seen a similarly coloured car in a German car advert, a decision he says “totally transforms the look of the car,” and since he’s done as much work on it as he feels comfortable, deferring the bigger jobs to a mechanic in Liphook as and when, and driven it as often as he’s been able: “I’ve re-lined the fuel tank, done the brakes, we’ve done the suspension, bits and pieces like that. I shouldn’t say this really but it simply hasn’t let me down. I’m out every dry day. I live quite near Guilford, I work in Guilford, and it sits in the car park downstairs, so it’s a dry day today so it comes out. I’m using it three or four times a week. It’s just for fun, but because all the rubbery, oily bits need to be used, don’t they? So I just keep using it. And it’s great.

“It’s a 1,500cc TS engine, which was the more powerful – it’s 70PS (51kW) instead of 60PS (44kW). Four-speed manual on the column, drum brakes all round, the engine is a Borgward engine, so it’s not come out of anything else, it was made by them.”

The biggest issue? Attention. “When I stop, anywhere I stop, outside a shop or wherever,” Iain jokes, “people come up and the first question they ask is ‘what is it?’. So now I’ve got a bit of paper in the back window that explains what it is so I can get out of the shop quicker!”

Why does Iain like to get out and about in the Isabella Combi quite so often, especially given there are “only four left of the Combi on the road in the UK”? “I just love it, I genuinely love it,” Iain says. “It’s a 1,500cc engine, so it’s not particularly big, relatively easy to drive, a nice big steering wheel, no power steering or anything like that, column shift takes a bit of teasing in every now and then.

“I can’t deny I quite like the looks you get, the thumbs up from people going past, because apart from these events like Goodwood and other little get-togethers in pub car parks, generally speaking you can drive around all day long and not see another classic. They’re just not out and about that often.”

Iain isn’t afraid to use it for longer drives too, or if the conditions take a turn, he needs to stretch his dog’s legs or even needs some DIY supplies: “I’m relatively precious about it but it gets used. I don’t mind getting caught in the rain – I don’t really go out in the rain, but if I get caught out in the rain hay ho, that’s fine. And similarly I’m a bit conscious of salt in the winter, but apart from there I just use it, I love it. The dog jumps in and off we go, we go for a walk.

“It sort of feels quite robust. It feels great, so I don’t really have a problem with it. Genuinely, within the last summer, I needed four sheets of plasterboard so I shot down in the Combi and got my four sheets of plasterboard.”

Aside from general maintenance, the only real modification Iain has made is to the roof, and we’re not talking about the red paint. “I got a guy down in Hastings to make me a vintage roof rack,” says Iain, “so it’s got a roof rack on it, and then I put my father-in-law’s golf clubs on there – anything from the 1960s – I’ve got some cases, a dodgy old surfboard on there, so now it’s in holiday mode. In the Spring I put all of that on there and it stays on there until the winter. It’s just much easier to keep it on there. Everyone laughs – people point, ‘look at that’ – it looks like you’re going on your holidays.”

Would he actually take it on his summer holidays? “Trip wise, I’m pretty brave,” Iain quips. “I don’t mind doing a 200-mile run or round trip. But recently some of the guys in the club went off to Lake Como, so people from all over Europe were going and about six cars from the UK went. And I’m not that brave. There’s nothing to tell me that it couldn’t make it, but actually that’s a long way to go in a classic car, isn’t it?”

And will the car ever part his company? The answer to that is a firm no: “Even though I do look at all the classic car magazines and websites and get excited about lots of things, I couldn’t really fit another thing in the garage and my wife is absolutely refusing – I cannot sell it, ever, it’s just simply never going to be sold. She’s already decided my daughter will go to her wedding in it whenever that is, so I’m afraid I’m stuck with it.” What a car to be stuck with.

Photography by James Lynch.