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ighton in history<br />
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Bubble Cars<br />
50s icons, made in <strong>Brighton</strong><br />
It could go over 50mph, but not much over. It<br />
shook you up on bumpy roads. It supposedly could<br />
fit three people, but was cosy even with two. It had<br />
a 250cc motorbike engine. Its odd appearance led<br />
people in Germany to nickname it ‘the rolling egg’.<br />
It had no seatbelts. Dave Watson, who owns one,<br />
says that, “like a lot of things made 60 years ago”,<br />
by modern standards it would be considered “a<br />
complete death-trap”.<br />
And yet, something like 130,000 Isetta cars were<br />
sold in the late 50s and early 60s. Elvis had one.<br />
It could get 83 miles to the gallon, if you stuck to<br />
30mph. The three-wheeled version could be driven<br />
on a motorbike license. As it was so small and its<br />
door was on the front, you could park it sideways in<br />
a narrow space, then get out directly onto the pavement.<br />
And the basic model only cost £320 – around<br />
£6,000 in modern money. It was marketed as ‘the<br />
world’s cheapest car to buy and run’.<br />
It appears that the bubble-car craze was triggered,<br />
or at least accelerated, by the 1956 Suez crisis. The<br />
situation caused fuel shortages throughout Europe,<br />
and led to five months of petrol rationing in Britain,<br />
which made fuel-efficient small cars much<br />
more appealing.<br />
The Isetta, which according to<br />
the <strong>Brighton</strong> Gazette was<br />
‘the original bubble<br />
car’, had been<br />
developed in<br />
1953 by<br />
an<br />
Italian company. At the time of Suez, it was being<br />
made in Germany by BMW, who sold the UK<br />
manufacturing rights to a Captain RJ Ashley. A former<br />
pilot, Ashley had given up a secure managerial<br />
job in order to set up his own factory, according to<br />
local historian Brigid Chapman.<br />
Production started in spring 1957, on New England<br />
Street, <strong>Brighton</strong>. A month or two previously, the<br />
factory had been a British Rail locomotive works,<br />
and many of the train engineers were kept on.<br />
The site had no road access, but still had its own<br />
railway line. The factory layout, which was designed<br />
by BMW, was “like a U shape around the railway<br />
line,” Watson says. “They used to unload the parts<br />
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