[2] The Arabella was a completely new design, owing nothing to the Lloyd Alexander which it initially complemented and then replaced in the manufacturer's range.

[1][4][5][6] The all-steel body followed modern styling trends, and featured a "panoramic wrap-around" rear window and tail fins.

The sales material of the time makes much of the car's passive safety features, such as the two spoke steering wheel with a recessed central hub, rounded door handles and a lock on the front seat-backs to prevent them from tilting forwards unexpectedly.

The padded dashboard and interior window frames were also unusual, and the claim can certainly be made that in terms of secondary safety (US English: "crashworthiness") the Lloyd Arabella marked a step forward for cars of this class.

However, testing of a chassis equipped with this combination indicated that would not all fit under the bonnet of the body, which by that stage had been finalised, so a four cylinder Boxer motor was hastily developed.

The flat configuration of the boxer motor made it suitable for the low bonnet line of the stylish bodywork, but accommodating it in the available space remained a challenge and the cooling fan had to be squeezed in above the two cylinders on the left side of the engine bay.

There was talk of installing the engine transversely, possibly in order to avoid having to redesign the gearbox to make it fit, but in the event the Arabella featured a longitudinally mounted boxer motor.

[1] During 1960 it was necessary to impose a major price increase, and in order to soften the blow a reduced specification cut-price Arabella was launched in July 1960, still with the 897 cc engine, but now in a detuned form offering a maximum power output of only 34 PS (25 kW) at 4,700 rpm.

[1] That in turn meant that drivers had to pay a little more for their fuel, because the higher compression ratio necessitated the use of the "super" grade (high octane) petrol (gasoline) which was beginning to become available at West German service stations.

[1] The Arabella de luxe was in these respects significantly brisker than more expensive (albeit larger and heavier) cars such as the Ford Taunus[8] or, more importantly, the class-defining Volkswagen[2] with its advertised top speed, in 1960, of only 112 km/h (70 mph) and leisurely standing start time to 100 km/h of 38 seconds.

[1] By the time the cars were actually disposed of they were powered by the 45 PS (33 kW) "high compression engine" version of the Arabella.

Volkswagen achieved sales volumes that more than covered necessary investment in upgrades for a car of which the basic architecture had not changed in more than ten years.