Borgward reboot stalls

Borgward's return as a leading premium car brand has hit the buffers after a decision by its Chinese owner, Foton, to retreat from selling cars in Europe less than two years after the Borgward BX5 and BX7 were introduced.

Back in 2015, the revived German brand announced its return after a 54-year hiatus at the Geneva motor show, announcing bold plans that it would build and sell 800,000 cars annually by 2020 and 1.6 million by 2025.

Basing itself in Stuttgart, Mercedes-Benz's heartland, Borgward announced plans for a 140,000 square-metre European factory in Bremen, also in Germany, targeting both BMW and Benz as its main rivals.

Since then, initial success with the BX5 and BX7 SUVs in China have tailed off, while in Europe in the first half of 2020, according to German publication Automobilwoche the entire Euro operation shifted just 5000 vehicles.

Speaking to the Automobilwoche, Borgward's now sole European outlet in Luxembourg denied the rumours of the brand's withdrawal, but there are no longer any signs of plans to introduce right-hand drive SUVs in the UK and Irish markets, while the car-maker has shuttered its European HQ in Stuttgart.

One of Germany's most respected brands in its heyday, before the premium car-maker went bankrupt back in 1961, Borgward employed more than 23,000 people and manufactured in excess of one million vehicles.

Originally founded back in 1919, Borgward also had an enviable sporting heritage to draw on. The German car-maker raced both at the Nurburgring 1000km and the Le Mans 24 Hour.

Borgward was also a technical pioneer, developing direct fuel-injection, but most will remember it as the German brand that invented the affordable sports sedan segment with its Isabella sedan – a concept copied by all its German rivals.

For its relaunch Borgward is led by industrialist Karlheinz Knöss and Christian Borgward, the grandson of the founder Carl Borgward.