A liter and a half—more or less a quart and a half—isn’t much to propel an automobile. That’s the swept volume available between pistons all the way down and all the way up in the engines of cars competing in the 1,500-cc class, one of the most celebrated categories down the years. Bigger engines are more exciting to many, but getting the best from a quart and a half, blown or unblown, has always been a stimulating challenge to drivers and engineers.

In divided Germany in the 1950s this class became a battleground for sports car makers. In the West, the rivals were Porsche, in the southern city of Stuttgart, and Borgward, in the northern port of Bremen. In the East, it was EMW, inheritor of the laurels of BMW, also builder of 1.5-liter sports racers. The venues were many from the Avus to the Nürburgring, embracing also the European Hillclimb Championship, which was for 1.5-liter cars in 1958 and ’59. Their rivalries even spilled over to the Carrera Panamericana in Mexico; but in history, the category will always be remembered as the one and only direct technical and ideological battleground between the two Germanies—East and West.

The personal fiefdom of Carl F. W. Borgward, the Bremen-based company, was already mature in the early 1950s. Hamburg-born in 1890, the entrepreneur was behind the marques Hansa and Goliath from the 1920s, building the first car under his own name in 1939. Recovering from the 80-percent destruction of his works during the war, Borgward was quickly back in business. Deeply interested in the concept and style of his cars, Carl Borgward was the first in Germany to produce sheer-sided “pontoon” body styles in volume.

Although an authentic “car guy” in the modern vernacular, Borgward had little passion for the nitty-gritty of motor sports. He knew it could have publicity benefits—and was considering building a sports car when war intervened—but was wary of racing’s legendary costs. Thus, he was intrigued when approached by August “Bubi” Momberger, erstwhile driver and developer for Auto Union. With AU colleagues who shared his view that the Russian Zone offered little future for their skills, Momberger set up Inka, an engineering unit near Oldenburg, west of Bremen.

Inka successfully won design contracts from Borgward for its Goliath and Lloyd models. As well, Bubi Momberger inveigled Borgward into motor sports by suggesting that Inka would meet the cost of building a record-breaking car on a Borgward chassis that would be gifted to it. Momberger himself was one of the four drivers who set a dozen international 1,500-cc records, including the prestigious 24-hour mark, at MontlhŽry in August of 1950. Later in the year, the aluminum-bodied roadster was the centerpiece of Carl Borgward’s 60th birthday celebrations.

Thanks to this success, Bubi Momberger and his chief designer, Martin Fleischer, were named to lead engineering at Borgward’s Goliath arm. Some of the disbanded Inka experts gravitated to the experimental department being set up at Borgward by Wilhelm Büchner. Thereafter, Büchner would oversee Borgward’s racing. “We’re not like Daimler-Benz, who periodically turn their whole technical strength toward racing for powerful commercial reasons,” Büchner explained. “Nor do we resemble Porsche, who build cars and race them out of sheer enthusiasm. We’re Borgward, where time and money to build racing cars must literally be stolen—when possible—from our prodigious car and truck development programs.”

Before he left, Inka Martin Fleischer, author of the chassis of Auto Union’s 1939 D-Type, laid down a new chassis for sports-racing Borgwards. This was of twin-tube frame design, using production-based parallel-wishbone front suspension and steering with de Dion rear suspension, all with coil springing. Except for a brief flirtation with a space frame, this remained the chassis layout of racing Borgwards through the 1950s. A former Focke-Wulf artisan, Nesemann, fashioned bodies of aluminum and in one instance magnesium.

For the whole story, see the March issue of Vintage Racecar.