The Official Borgward Arabella Website

www.arabella-freunde-deutschland.de

Borgward Club of Australia

www.borgwardisabella.com

Here are a few photos of the worst of the rust

What does not show here (hidden by the shock absorber mount) is a piece of aluminum bolted over a rust hole to support the left end bracket for the clutch pedal.

Front Left Door Pillar

Front Left Floor Panel

Left Side Of Boot Floor

Right Side Of Boot Floor

Left Rear Wheel Arch

These views certainly give the impression that Arabella is a grand old lady who likes to wear lace.

The chassis is now with Ewen who is going to fabricate new parts to rebuild the chassis to Land Transport Safety Authority (LTSA) requirements.

More news after our holiday

Time to report on progress. The summer has finished and Ewen has been working magic on the chassis. We are now about 3 weeks away from it being finished. The following photos are updated shots of the ones above. Ewen has certainly done a good job.

Ewen completely rebuilt the top ledge from left to right. Here it is held in place with dowels.

This certainly look smarter than the earlier photo.

This gives a better view of the quality of work that has gone into the rebuilding the top. The support for the clutch cable has been rebuilt underneath.

This is the completed view of the front end.

Front left door pillar. Part of the sill has also been replaced as the sandblasting showed up holes we did not know were there.

The floor is safe to stand on again.

In the meantime dismantling of the white car from Kaikoura was completed and it was found to be in a very poor state and not economical to restore. A decision was made that it would become a donor vehicle. We therefore cut the boot floor from it to use on the blue car as the one below was very thin in the centre. This meant we only had to bebuild the outer edges of the floor. The spare wheel frame on the blue car was badly crushed yet almost perfect on the white one so changing the floor assisted here also.

Original floor cut away to piece in the replacement.

And after many hours of restoration the chassis is delivered back home by Ewen on 25th June 2009

The front of the Arabella from Keith is in the bottom corner

April 2010

Time to get the project underway again. Since Ewen returned the rebuilt chassis it has sat in the carport while I have finished off other projects. 

After much deliberation I decided to have the whole chassis acid dipped. My reason is that there was still a lot of the original sealant to be removed and this would be very time consuming. Also there are hidden crevasses  that would be difficult to ensure that they were treated properly. As a result in early April I took the chassis together with a selection of body panels and suspension arms to Rotorua to be treated while I am away. Doug at Kiwi Metal Polishers will also repaint the entire lot with an etch primer ready for work to continue.

After the workshop was cleaned out after the woodworking I set up my small paint booth and started sandblasting some of the smaller part. Here I have blasted away the old paint and rust, applied a coat of zinc primer followed by an etch primer. All spare parts will be treated this way to preserve them while parts to be used will go onto be painted.

Headlamp anti-glare ring partially sanblasted

Headlamp Housing

Undercoated

Margaret and I have now returned from Germany and the chassis is ready to to collect from Doug in Rotorua. Hopefully I will be able to go up there in the next couple of weeks to collect it.

"Arabella-Freunde Deutschland" Arabella Friends of Germany

Uwe Pawelski with whom I have been corresponding in Germany and his friend Hans Kaut decided to form a club for "Borgward Arabella" owners and admirers of the car. They decided that for too long the "Arabella" has never been recognised in it's own right as it always seemed to be in the shadow of it's big sister "Isabella".

They sent letters to as many Arabella owners and fans that they could contact, some who became known to us through this website and as a result 21 Arabella's and 53 Arabella enthusists came together from Thursday 13th to Sunday 16th May 2010 at Viechtach in the Bavarian Forest in Southern Germany. Among those people were Margaret and myself. Apart from a large contingent from Germany, others came from Italy and Denmark.

Uwe and his wife Silke were so kind to lend Margaret and me their campervan in which during the next two weeks we traveled through part of Germany. The weekend after the meeting in Viechtach we arrived in Bremen where once again we met up with our new friends and had a "Borgward Tour" of Bremen organised by Uwe.

Our "German Borgward Experience" started in Viechtach at the Schnitzmuhle Resort where the "Arabella-Freunde Deutschland" or "1st International Arabella Meeting" was to be held. 

Margaret and I arrived two days early and rested up after our flight from New Zealand. On the Wednesday we took a day trip to  Prague and on returning to Schnitzmule saw our first roadworthy Arabella for about 35 years owned by Walter and Inge Dzubiel. As soon as Walter saw me looking over his car I was given the keys and told to take it for a drive.

  Inge, Walter, myself and Uwe in deep discussion about the Arabella.

The next day Arabella's from throughout Germany and Denmark started arriving and in total 19 arrived. Initially 32 were scheduled to attend but owing to bad weather that was expected a number of owners decided against attending. The car in not known affectionally as the Aquabella for nothing however those that did attend didn't mind mopping the cars out from time to time.

The following selection of photographs shows each of the cars that attended.

Yes, Twin Pipes created a unique sound.

Unfortunately because of the weather on Friday the planned events had to be cancelled and instead we took a trip to a private collection of Zundap motorcycles.

It is understood that this collection features every model made including this curiosity made from wood.

 The next morning the weather was much better and we were able to have the tour around the Viechtach area and visit the Seeblick Restaurant at Hollensteinsee and the Joska Kristall glass factory as planned.

The carpark at Seeblick Restaurant was very large and perfect for taking group photographs of the cars which is believed to be the largest gathering of Arabella's since the early 1960's.

 After the group photoshoot we had lunch at the restaurant which overlooks a picturesque lake with an electricity generating plant before taking photos of the cars and owners and then moving on to the Joska Kristall factory where a carpark had been reserved for the Arabella's.

Yes Hans they are following us.

 After visiting the Kristall factory we made our way back to Viechtach for our closing dinner and preparations for departure the following day.

 Sunday morning saw everyone depart for home. Some drove their Arabella's but others such as the Danes had transporters. The last to leave was this group. From Left

Renato (Italy), Uwe (Germany), Margaret (NZ), Sikle (G), Walter (G), Rita (Italy), Lydia and Hans (G), Myself, Dagmar (G) Georg and Adolf (G).

 It was now time to leave so Margaret and I started driving the campervan North trying to remember to drive on the right side of the road.

The following Thursday we arrived in Bremen and met some of the group from Viechtach and other Borgward enthusiests from the Bremen area. We stayed aboard the Schulschiff Deutschland a sailing ship built in 1927 and is now permanently moored in Bremen and used for accommodation, wedding venues and conferences.

Margaret coming onto the main deck from the accommodation deck below

Christian Jnr, Christian Snr, Georg and Hans enjoying the afternoon sun.

 The next morning started foggy but after breakfast it cleared and we saw our transport for the day, a 1953 Borgward Omnibus that originally saw service as public transport in Bremen.

Our tour around Bremen took in sites of interest relating to Carl Borgward and the Borgward group.

This is the house that he lived in.

And his resting place

We visited the Focke Museum which is a transport museum where this bust of Carl Borgward is on display

and the wooden prototype of the Arabella shown here with Margaret. This is the same model shown elswhere in this website. When I uploaded that photo a couple of years ago I had no idea that we would actually see it ourselves.

 We were fortunate enough to visit a private collection of vehicles of the Borgward group owned by a person who has a business restoring these vehicles. As well as cars being restored for clients he has a collection of his own.

Borgward P100.     www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borgward_P100

Borgward Arabella Coupe

The premises is an old garage and fuel station with the vehicles below in the showroom

Borgward Arabella

Borgward Isabella. This vehicle took part in one of the Mexican Rallies

Hansa 2400

Isabella restoration

 Then we visited the Mercedes factory where we took a tour and watched vehicles being assembled.

The Mercedes plant stands on the site of the Borgward factory and some of the original buildings are still in use.

Outside the gates to the factory stands this tribute to Carl Borgward.

The tour at which we were also fortunate to see Mercedes vehicles on the test track concluded a fantastic day for those interested in the Borgward marque.

Just out of interest, these were three of the vehicles that some of the Bremen enthusiests drove to the Mercedes plant.

Messerschmitt KR200    www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_KR200

Borgward Arabella

BMW Isetta   www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isetta

 Many Thanks to Uwe and Hans for making the effort to organise the first Arabella-Freunds Deutschland meeting. It was very sucessful and Margaret and I hope to take part in another one in the future.

Looking at the two cars it appears that the white one is the better of the two. However it had been stored outside and as well as the floor panels rusted away some body panels had rusted out also.

The blue car had been stored inside a barn for many years and the surface rust is a result of bird droppings on the paint. While it lifted the paint the metal was virtually untouched. Dispite its sad look I decided to restore the blue car first.

The car arrived with most of its parts stored inside the car. My guess is the engine broke down and it was removed. Also door linings, chrome trim, headlights etc had also been removed but thankfully stored inside the car. The seats are in good condition, almost as new, although the birds also made their way inside the car.

Dashboard is in good condition although glove box and some wiring has also been removed.

Stripping down has commenced. All seats are out. The engine can be seen in the boot.

The car is sitting on a trolley I made to enable it to be easily moved around. It made life simple.

The car sits on the central tube with blocks to stabilise it.

All panels are bolted into place which makes removal really simple. I had to guess at the assembly order of the car when it was made to not only dismantle it, but to use the reverse order to rebuild it later so the work flow would be smooth.

Some serious body rust is now starting to show although door pillars are thankfully solid.

Time to start down the back with the boot lid being removed first followed by the mudguards.

Finally the boot frame it removed.

Initially I tried to remove the roof before the boot frame but could not get the roof off. Now with the boot frame removed it was possible to start removing the roof.

The roof was secured all around with screws. With them removed it was possible to start lifting the roof. I then found that the roof lining was held between the roof and framework. It was then apparent that the assembly proceedure called for the roof to be painted, turned over for the head lining to be fitted, then the whole assembly fitted to the car. Maybe that was standard proceedure then, but I thought it damned clever thinking. All linings were carefully removed to be used as patterns for new linings.

Finally all panels were off and there was just the suspension, transmission and steering to remove.

Finally it was down to the bare chassis and almost ready for sandblasting.

To faciltate sandblasting, repairs and painting, I decided to build a rolling frame from a couple of lengths of 65mm pipe I had been hoarding for about 23 years. There is value in the saying "It will eventually be used".

The frame certainly makes access easy.

Its now ready for sandblasting, and the start of the repairs.

7th October 2008. On the way to be sandblasted.

Original wooden prototype of Borgward Arabella now on display at Focke Museum in Bremen. Published with kind permission of Manfred Erdmann who took the original photograph

See the Comments Page regarding this car.

Many thanks to the owners of these cars, photos and sketches. I would like for you to contact me. Denis

Hi Denis   I read your story about how you got infected with the Borgward virus. Looking at the pictures in yr gallery, one of the Arabella's I used to own. Its the white car with license plate DE-23-23. It was imported to Holland from Switserland and when I owned it, it still had the original paint and interior Actually its a Loyd Arabella. Think that only in 1960 they started to sell them as Borgward Arabella. The car is now owned by Bennie Bennis who runs the Dutch Borgward truck club.   All the best    Harm Bil      

14th June 2009

Great restoration, I randomly came across your site while googling for "sandblasting" and "roof lining".  Only after a while did I notice it was a .co.nz so that was a pleasant surprise

I'm currently restoring a 1972 Datsun 1600 and was wondering whether to take the roof lining out or not.

It makes sense to remove it just to make sure nothing is hiding under there but it's a bit of a shame as it looks brand new and I have been told it won't ever fit the same! 

Nice work on a very interesting car, you should make a comments section on your site as I bet you're missing out on a lot of praise!

Cheers

Sandeep

20  June 2010

Dear Arabella friend !

 I got your card from my friend Tim, who met you in Germany at the first international Arabella-meeting.

Unfortunately I couldn’t be with the Arabella owners, because my wife just had given birth to our little daugther Lena.

It would have been a very great pleasure for me to meet you – your webside is fantastic!

I live in Switzerland and I own all Arabella cars of the country – 30 Arabella cars in all – isn’t it crazy?

My father bought his first car directely from the Lloyd-factory in Bremen in march 1960. Since then our family drives Arabella cars every day. My father and I made more than 1'000'000 km (million)

on Arabella cars.

As Arabella owners will know, maintenance is an ongoing task. This ia a photo I took about August 1973 of Kerian (of this website) aged about 18 months old helping me with some maintenance.

We kept our little Arabella until about 1978 when we had to get a larger vehicle as by then we were married with three growing boys.

Unfortunately there were no buyers wanting it and we scrapped it together with all the spares.

And there our interest with the Arabella's stayed for 28 years.

Fast forward to 2006 and a Classic Car Show was being held in Napier where we now live (East Coast North Island). An article in the paper mentioned that a Borgward enthusiast from Wellington Chris Butler together with his parents and friends Jeff and Maggie were bringing four Borgwards to the show. Margaret and I went along and became acquainted with Chris. Through this meeting we learnt a lot about Carl Borgward and his cars. Chris was particularly interested in some things I kept, badges and parts catalogue in particular which I gave him.

Probably the most important thing to come from that meeting was a reawakened interest in the Arabella model in particular. This started me wondering if there were any still around.

February 2008 and Shaun (our second son) saw one for sale on TradeMe. It was in Kaikoura (East Coast SI) and as I was the only one bidding for it soon owned my 4th Borgward Arabella. A bonus was the front half of another one plus a heap of parts from yet another. These were aquired from Bob Bell a car enthusiast himself who had obtained the car a couple of years earlier simply to save it from the scrap heap. The photo shows both cars loaded at Bobs property ready to begin the 500km trip to Napier. Bob incidently featured in the September 2008 edition of New Zealand Classic Car magazine together with his cars and amazing "Blokes Shed".

Prior to traveling to Kaikoura, Margaret and I met David and Gwen Saunders in Christchurch. David and Gwen have owned Borgwards for many years and I was fortunate to purchase some Arabella spares from Dave in anticipation of the project ahead of me. Dave is a mine of information on Borgwards and I was also fortunate to be given a set of technical bulletins issued by Borgward for the Arabella. Dave, Gwen and their Isabella featured in New Zealand Classic Car in the March 2001 issue. 

(May 2009. I have just received from Gary, a former owner of the white car the original ownership papers. Surprise Surprise one of the owners was Dave Saunders who purchased it on 14 June 1975.)

Well when you start looking instead of just wondering, you start seeing things you did not notice before. Within days of safely arriving home with Arabella numbers four and five (or should that be four and half?) I found another up near the top of the North Island which was for sale by Hans Compter. After a short discussion Margaret and I decided that after so many years, two Arabella's were better than one so we also purchased it from Hans. Car number six! I think I had become obsessed with the little cars.  And the kitchen is still not finished.

A few weeks later Hans delivered the car and as you can see below the twins were together at home. Cute are they not?

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder

So there is our story of how we got to know of a little car called Arabella, and her sister Arabella, and her other sister Arabella .........

So it is time to start restoring them to their original beauty.

or

was number seven just waiting to introduce herself?  

Lets start the restoration first. 

24th September 2008

It is now October and the first car has been stripped down. Next week Margaret and I are travelling to Hokitika for her school reunion. Also while in Hokitika we have an appointment to meet someone, A lady called "Arabella". Number seven I think!

I have had a trailer made with which to transport her to Napier. I tested it with the white car and it proved very successful

Once we are back I have promised to make progress towards completing the kitchen before Christmas

14th October 2008

May 2009

It has been a while since updating the site and a lot has happened in the meantime, not the least that I got some work done on the kitchen for Margaret.

We had a sucessful trip to Hokitika where we met Keith Manson and took delivery of Arabella #7 from him. Keith bought the car many years ago and is trying to locate the ownership papers to determine the actual owners. He thinks he was either the second or third owner. either way the car only has 38,410km's on the odometer.

Keith took the car to the West Coast for his father to do some tidying up and paint it, however his father moved to a smaller home and did not have room to store it so it went to a farmlet where it stayed in a shed in storage.

We are very lucky as all the window rubbers and chrome trim was masked off with tape for painting which preserved them remarkedly well. Keiths father also had the foresight to spray the body panels with a rust preservative which left the car in a remarkably good condition. Basically there was some rust under two mudguard panels and a little in the boot floor. The boot surround however has a bad patch where a leaky roof constantly dripped on it but inside the floor still retains its original paint and the engine also turns over.

Keith realised that he would not be able to restore the car and handed it over to me on the understanding that I would do so. We now have the real possibility of being able to restore two Arabella's to original condition. Many thanks to Keith for his generosity.

Keith Manson. Keith came over to Hokitika from Christchurch to hand the car over to me.

Passing through Wellington on the way to Napier

April 2010. Time to update the site again. The cars have been neglected lately while I made the effort to concentrate on the kitchen and get it finished and out of the way of more important things, namely rebuilding two Arabella's.

Late in 2009 I received an email from Coulton Finch in Christchurch offering me his Arabella. Yep thats right, "Arabella number 8.

The car belonged to his father who bought it in the 70's and was used regularily until it suffered the fate of many Arabella's, the engine failed. After the usual check as to what went wrong, the car was left in peace. Coulton offered me the car to use what I could so in February I went down to Christchurch with a trailer to see what could be recovered. The poor girl was really in a bad state with terminal rust in all body areas, however surprisingly there were parts that were in quite good condition. The car had been parked under a tree that kept it out of the direct sunlight and as a result the window rubbers are reasonable and after some rejuvenation will be suitable for reuse. I removed a quantity of chrome parts and both doors. One door skin in particular will be usable having no damage over the main surface. I also brought back the rear window which just lifted out as all surounding metal had rusted away.

As the position of the car made extraction difficult, meaning cut the fence and take it out through the neighbors property we decided to leave the rest which Coulton will disect and I will recover the front portion later in the year. Unfortunately we could not identify the chassis number as all that area had rusted away. The main thing is however that another car has been used to provide a source of parts for the future. Many Thanks Coulton.

While the car initially looked reasonable a closer lookshowed all panels had sever rust.

Easter 2010. For those not in the know, I have been building a new kitchen for Margaret for a wee while now. However at last it is finished!!!!!!. One happy Margaret , and one happier Denis now I can concentrate properly on rebuilding the cars. Just to prove it's done, here is a couple of shots of the kitchen. I did everything except the benchtop and tiles on the floor. All cupboard doors were handmade from recycled rimu.

The week after Easter was spent cleaning out the workshop sweeping up wood shavings etc and converting it from a woodworking workshop to a mechanical one.

I also had an opportunity to store all the body parts away in the storage shed. It is nice and dry in there and keeps warm so there will be no more deteriation to the body parts. 

This is the chassis of the car from Keith in Hokitika

I had racks madeso all parts could be hung out of the way

Record Of Chassis and Registration Numbers

The following is a list of the Chassis Numbers and Registration details of the cars featured in this website.

LP 900 38  "30/137625"   Reg # AL 3256  (White car From Hokitika)

           Manufactured December 1960

Arabella     "30/139430"                          (Yellow half car from Kaikoura)

          Manufactured January 1961

Arabella 38  "30/145083"  Reg # CQ 5700 (White car from Kaikoura)          

          Manufactured July 1961

Arabella 38 "30/145203"  Reg # AC 2516 (My original car)                          

           Manufactured July 1961

Arabella 38 "30/145268"  Reg # BA 731    (Blue Car from Whangarei)         

           Manufactured July 1961

           First Reg NZ 6 December 1961   Auckland

Arabella 38 "30/145470"

           Manufactured July 1961

           No known details. Part of a rusted chasis among other parts