One of Germany’s well-known car makers, BMW began building engines for airplanes. Forbidden to continue making airplane engines after WWI, BMW turned to engines for motorcycles and heavy trucks. 

Gebráder Ihle Karosserie und Apparatebau was a body shop and engineering company in Germany. After the first world war it supplied vehicles for fairground operators. In 1934, they designed a sports-car body to be mounted on a BMW Dixi chassis. 

Driven by the need for post-war affordable transportation, BMW decided to supplement slow sales of their larger models with an inexpensive car. In 1955, BMW acquired the license from ISO (an Italian refrigerator company) to make this “bubble car.” 

BMW had only been building motorcycles for a few years when the world’s economy crashed. Timing and design were perfect, and the R2 quickly became a people’s favorite.

The car seen here is one-of-one; it was designed, built, and raced by Frazier Sibbald, George Olsen, and Howard Bliss, all of California. A triangulated square-tube frame was utilized, with a fiberglass nose and tail, aluminum doors, a hot-rodded BMW “airhead” from a 700 Sport Coupe, and LeGrand Formula car suspension were blended into this miniature Lotus 23B.

Lawrie Bond designed his first three-wheeler in 1948. His most famous was the Bond Minicar–the longest-lived and most successful of Britain’s minimal motoring cars. The replacement for the minicar was the Bond 875.