Forget about Steve McQueen and his "Great Escape"; here is "The Small Escape" across the Berlin Wall in an escape plan that was as brilliant as it was crazy: since large vehicles were getting controlled more frequently and thoroughly, a West Berliner had the seemingly impossible but ingenious idea of using the smallest and most inconspicuous car available at the time, the BMW Isetta, to help him smuggle a man across the border into the West.
Here is the full story of that daring escape - click here - and here is a clip of the "bubble car", the BMW Isetta, which made it all possible:
My older brother who is getting on in years - when Mozart was his age, he'd already been dead for fifty-eight years - owned a BMW Isetta which he traded in for something bigger when his daughter was born in 1959.
I bought my first car in 1963, a second-hand FIAT 500, which broke down not long afterwards. It taught me a lesson as I had to keep paying it off. I made my very last repayment just weeks before I boarded the ship bound for Australia, after which I never owned another car until 1973.
Now I drive a Chinese-built MG3 as I can't afford a BMW Isetta which sells for well over $40,000. Here is one that sold in Sydney for $45,500!
