Post
by Bill Murray » 25 Mar 2010 22:09
Hi Sean:
You are correct, of course but in this case Oswald was as you say sticking to the years of the title of his book.
A very few of those Isabella's made it to our shores in the first wave of post WWII imports but they could not establish a dealer network for such a small volume car in such a large market so they never really caught on.
As a side note to that, when I was a police officer in 1961/1962, I owned a Fiat 600 and one of my fellow officers owned one of those BMW bubble cars (Isetta??) and my former room mates owned a 1959 Beetle and a 1960ish Austin Healy Bugeye Sprite. It was amazing what you could buy at that time in this country before all the safety/emissions/fuel consumption regulations came into effect in later years.
To name a few more that are now long gone from our shores, Renault, Peugot, Simca, Citroen, Rover, Sunbeam, Vauxhall, Opel, Taunus/Ford Cologne, Lancia...well I will stop there but there were probably a dozen more at that time and not one....one, from Japan or Korea, two countries that are high on the sales list here today.
Sorry, just a trip down nostalgia lane. Oh, forgot, we did have Yugos for a few years too.
Bill