Trego's Mountain Ear

As I watched the Robotics kids show their robots, my thoughts went back to the Borgward Isabella I drove in college.  It was a little car, advanced beyond its time – and the designer, Carl Borgward, had been building remote controlled tracked vehicles for the Germans in World War II.

This illustrates how the thing was used, and shows why I thought of this unit as the students put their robots through their paces.  Goliath Tracked Mine: The Beetle That Started the ROV Craze

Obviously, the WW II technology didn’t include wifi – and I suspect driving a miniature tank through 2000 feet and 3 strands of wire, to park it under a tank, then explode it, probably had a lot of problems due to breaking wire.  The 2 cylinder engine from this device became the powerplant for Borgward’s Goliath automobile.

Borgward’s larger remote controlled vehicle, in its most impressive iteration, looked like this:

It’s engine was hotted up and powered the post-war Borgward Isabellas. 

In its most aggressive variant, it looked like this model:

Hemmings has this 59 Borgward Isabella listed for sale at $25,000 -with only 17 567 miles on it.  The photo series at 1959 Borgward Isabella Saloon Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania | Hemmings takes me back to some good memories in 1970.