Archaeology and the great Borgward
01/18/2012
The time dimension was different in the sixties. Today, a trade magazine is almost irrelevant if it takes more than a month from the appearance of a new car to the first test. In the early sixties, it could take several months for a comprehensive test to appear.
This was also the case with the "big Borgward" (also known as the P 100, Airswing or 2.3-liter ), which was presented at the IAA in Frankfurt in 1959 and was presented again with air suspension in Brussels a few months later in 1960.
In November 1960, Automobil Revue began to prepare for a long-distance test and it was to take another six months (and countless letters) before the test car was ready. The test car then also showed defects, which made a retest with a second vehicle necessary. In total, Automobil Revue drove at least four P-100 vehicles (two short tests and a comprehensive presentation were also published) in different configurations, which was more than two per thousand of all vehicles built, especially considering the low total German production of 2,587 units.
And despite all this meticulousness and "persistence", the aforementioned long-distance test never appeared, because Borgward had meanwhile stretched its legs, gone bankrupt and been sold off.
But we have "dug" like archaeologists in the archives and analyzed all the relevant documents from back then and have now put them online in the report " Borgward P100 from 1961 - the never published AR long-distance test " . We have compiled a total of thirty photos, several tables and all the measurement results, as well as the notes of the individual test drivers - exclusive and never shown before!
And in the next few days we will also be publishing a comprehensive report on the Borgward P 100 and today's driving experiences.
