Miguel Sánchez
Isetta photos: BMW Press, ISO, Unai Ona
With more or less intensity depending on the case, the truth is that competition has always served to spur sales at dealerships. Something that was clear even in the massive and generalist Ford. where the motto “win on sunday, sell on monday” marked a good part of its range during the sixties. Likewise, we do not even have to leave Spain to find examples in this sense. Not surprisingly, already at the end of the fifties paco bulto I was perfectly clear about that “sales follow the checkered flag”. So much so that, in fact, he abandoned his participation in Montesa when it began to question the role of his racing department.
And it is that, both for brand image and for being an excellent testing ground for the development of new technologies, competition has always been a key area for most manufacturers. Manufacturers that have not always had in their desire to create a performance range. What's more, some of the sports models most iconic of all time have derived from a priori urban designs in the antipodes of sports motorsport. There are the Abarths based on the FIAT 600 or the Mini Cooper S itself to verify it. In fact, there are even more extreme and striking cases where, in addition, the serial conditions were not even substantially altered.
One of them is that of the Isetta entered in the Mille Miglia of 1954. Something especially striking because, beyond their exotic stamp in the middle of such an appointment, those units managed to mark very interesting achievements. To get started, several of them managed to finish the entire route. Composed layout, let's remember, for about 1.600 kilometers where wide straight lines alternated with extremely hard mountain roads. In addition, the fastest of all those Isetta finished the test in just over 22 hours.
In this way, the average marked by that unit was about 72 kilometers per hour. More than enough to dominate in the performance classification, where the times set in relation to the displacement and power of each vehicle were taken into account. That is to say, although those Isettas had been among the last among the almost 200 registered, finishing the Mille Miglia with a slightly embarrassing average had already been quite an achievement. Not surprisingly, we are talking about microcars with two-stroke engines, 236 cubic centimeters and 9,5CV.
In short, the mechanics that at that same time would be ideal for a touring motorcycle. Not for a vehicle with four wheels, no matter how meager they were. Thus, ISO did not hesitate to use the presence of its microcars in the Mille Miglia to promote them at dealerships. Even in the advertising of his Autocar you could read “the engine of the Mille Miglia” with the same pride that they could have expressed at Ferrari. Without complex. A fact that helped to improve sales a little although, in truth, by 1955 the Italian Isetta was already in a bleak commercial moment.
VELAM ISETTA, READY TO SET RECORDS
ISO decided to make the leap into motorsport with the presentation of the Isetta in 1953. A year in which, even with the obvious difficulties of the post-war period, the Italian population was caressing mass motorization thanks to the popular FIAT ranges. That is, although the Isetta still had an obvious market, this one was not as wide as its manufacturer expected. At this point, the survival in Italy of this microcar was not due so much to its sales as to the foreign exchange achieved since 1955. Foreign exchange achieved thanks to the manufacturing licenses negotiated with the German BMW and the French Velam.
From here, the Isetta went international. In fact, It was even manufactured in the Madrid neighborhood of Carabanchel by Iso-Motor Italia SA. However, depending on the country, its original design received substantial changes. In this way, while in France or Spain the monocoque chassis of the Italian version was maintained, in Germany this was replaced by one of the spars on which the body was adjusted. In addition, at BMW the mechanics also changed while, in France, Velam chose to continue with the same two-stroke, double-piston mechanics. Clearly insufficient in terms of power at low revs and, moreover, particularly noisy.
Quite a contrast with the performance Talbot-Lago with six cylinders. Manufactured in the same factory on the outskirts of Paris where Velam assembled its Isettas. Furthermore, when these finally came out on the French market in mid-1956, They did it with a sale price not much lower than that marked by the Citroën 2CV. That is to say, just as in Italy the FIAT 500 took the local Isetta ahead, in France the Velam version barely had a chance of survival against the simple but much larger, effective and credible 2CV.
Given this situation, Velam managers did not know what to do to avoid an unmitigated disaster. Moment in which, at the beginning of 1957, they decided to promote some type of sports initiative with which to agitate some type of advertising strategy. Exactly the same as what ISO had done by sending that small fleet to the Mille Miglia in 1954. With all this, the option chosen was that of an Isetta that, even with an aerodynamic bodywork under an almost unrecognizable appearance, hid the standard mechanics.
Thus, during the summer of 1957 that modified Velam Isetta managed to set seven world records at the Circuit de Monthléry. All of them related to Class K. The one reserved for the few cars with less than 250 cubic centimeters. Indeed, one of those records was that of circulating 24 hours in a row at an average of 109,66 kilometers per hour. Undoubtedly something quite meritorious for that machine although, at the same time, incapable of spurring sales. In fact, the year after these tests, in 1958, the Velam Isetta ceased production at the same time as the Iso Isetta in Italy. Of course, they had left behind a design repeatedly remembered by the fans.
