Carl F. W. Borgward

[1][2][3] He was of modest origin, the son of coal retailer Wilhelm Borgward, and had twelve brothers and sisters.

On 23 September 1938 the Carl F. W. Borgward Automobil- und Motorenwerke factory was opened in Sebaldsbrück near Bremen.

When the factory was destroyed by bombing in 1944, half of the workers were prisoners of war and forced laborers.

The small car with a plywood body on a wooden chassis had a two-stroke engine and was in the market segment under the Volkswagen Beetle, and kept this position over a decade.

The Borgwards met the spirit of the time: the German customers wished for American-type styling and chrome decoration with European compact dimensions.

Increased competition on the segment of mid-sized cars, and the broad and uneconomical range of models, as well as poor financial and tactical choices by management, led the company into crisis at the end of the 1950s.