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We've gathered up some classic shots that have been taken of various Isetta configurations, goof-off shots and stories about the various uses that Isettas have been tasked with.
If you have any Isetta-related pix you think would be appropriate to post here, please email them to us via the Feedback link along with the story behind them and your permission to use it. That shot on the left of your screen is Firemarshal Bill Waite's car carefully situated under Izilla.
Revised March 2004
"Here's a photo of Chris Farley in my car I rented to Saturday Night Live for a skit that was never seen because it wound up on the cutting room floor. It was called Tortoise Man. It was filmed on location at a closed down fast food place in Queens, New York. The story idea was that here was this little boy who eats alot and later in life he got so big that he became trapped in his car much like the tortoise trapped in its shell and he lives in the car forever".
"To make Chris look bigger they took the windows out of the car, put Chris into a BIG foam rubber suit and put another person in the suit with him! This way when the car was shown there were two arms sticking out of the side windows like he's this really huge person filling up the entire car. I always was going to go back to get Chris to autograph the pictures, but shortly after this filming he left the show so I never got the chance" ... JW
If the car looks familiar, it is the same one that's in the picture down the page with “Helga” standing in it. The same car was also used in a Comedy Central show with comic Jeff Ross in his rap music video parody titled I've Got a Little Penis featured thru the entire video. It was used one last time for a music video in NYC with German recording artist BODO for his song Before You Wave Goodbye. It might be the most commercially used Isetta around other than the Urkel car from Family Matters which was really 4 or 5 Isettas that were used during the show.
These two are no dummies when it comes to their taste in cars.
No jack? No problem.
Speaking of Jak's, if you're ever in the Canyon Lake, Texas neighborhood, here's a culinary tip worth looking into.
Hmmm ... let's see here, hooded babe hits on dude with ladder and hula hoop while parked on tarmac at airport by cool plane while he's trashing her paint job with bottom of ladder and ... This could be a still from a REALLY bad movie.
Speaking of babes, here we have our lovely assistant Helga conducting a stress-test on a pair of size 8 undies. If that thing ever lets go, someone's gonna get killed.
If and when Helga ever gets through with her "presentation" and turns that ignition key on, this is the next sound you'll hear. Note: This is an 8 MB audio/video download. The mpeg runs around 90 seconds. High volume (sounds awesome on 11) and a cranked-up subwoofer will greatly enhance the experience. This clip is the same one posted in the Services section under Perry's Motorcycles and Sidecars.
Planning a bank heist? How about this for a low profile getaway car? For some strange reason, this looks like it oughta be Helga's car.
We don't need no stinkin' Surburban!
As obscure as the Isetta is, part of the fun of owning one is the never-ending stream of stories people come up with. There are stories about the family Isetta, the junior high teacher's Isetta that always ended up sideways on the loading dock, and on, and on, and on.
One good one we were told concerned a US Military installation in Germany back in the '60's. Seems like a bridge had washed out and was being guarded on one side by US troops and on the other by German troops. Out of nowhere, here comes one of the locals in his Isetta running flat out on the US side. A couple of the guards jumped out of the truck and waved him down only to see him hit the brakes and skid down the river bank and stop, door-first in the mud. The guy was OK, as was his Isetta. They hitched the wench on the duece-and-a-quarter up to the chain drive and pulled him back out. After collecting his thoughts, the driver thanked the Yanks, did a 180 and took the long way home.
Another yarn came from a lady that lived next door to the location where we were dismantling our car. She always dropped by to watch the progress. Seems like a couple of weeks before her daughter's (now in her early 60's) 16th birthday, she and her husband asked their daughter what she wanted for a present. Her reply? "An Isetta!". Well, the folks weren't about to part with $1000, or ANY amount of money, for a car for her. The morning of her birthday, she got up and shot straight out to the garage ... no Isetta. Then she went running out the front door to look in the driveway ... no Isetta. In a state of total disbelief, she announced that she was not going to school and spent the rest of the day in her bedroom sobbing. She never got her Isetta but lived to tell about it.
Here's a wacky one that has that 'old wive's tale' sound about it. A guy was talking about his Dad's Isetta and the fact that a friend's Isetta had a dead battery at work one day. His Dad agreed to jump start it but only had one good jumper cable. They parked their cars facing each other, hooked up the one cable to the positive side of their respective batteries, touched the doors together for the ground side and cranked the dead car right up. Sounds like some quick thinking but you be the judge.
Then there was the guy that smuggled no telling how many people out of East Berlin during the Berlin Wall days. Apparently, he had clearance to come and go on a regular basis over a long period of time. People hid in a secret compartment under the parcel tray in his Isetta, balled up over the chain drive. His demise? As the story goes, he had an elderly lady he was sneaking into West Berlin. While at the guard house, the lady tried to resituate herself and in the process, grabbed the exhaust pipe to steady herself. The ensuing yell alerted the guards to what was going on.
By the way, there's a show on PBS called Rick Steve's Europe. If you get a chance to see the Berlin episode, there's footage of this Isetta in the program along with the story.
Click here for a screen shot of a copy of the original patent document submitted to the US Patent Office by Renzo Rivolta. This one was up for grabs on eBay.
Firemarshal Bill sends this one along ... While at a car show earlier this
year, a man told me how his wife had run out of gas in her Isetta 300 along
the side of a country road. A thunder storm was brewing but she managed to walk
the 3 miles to home just before it started to pour down rain. He grudgingly
picked up a gallon can of gas and headed back up the deserted road to the
Isetta. It wasn't until after he had poured the gas into the tank that he
realized his wife had left the parking lights on and the battery charge was so
low it wouldn't turn the engine over. Sitting behind the wheel, he was wet,
cold, and thoroughly disgusted with his wife. He had resigned himself to
walking all the way back home in the blowing rain, but when he went to climb
out of the car, a gust of wind caught the front door and almost blew it out of
his grasp. This gave him an idea. Putting the car in neutral, he opened the
door just enough to catch the wind at the optimum angle and soon had the Isetta
rolling fast enough to slip the transmission into second gear, pop the clutch,
and jump start the little engine on the first try.
Try that with your piece of Detroit Iron.
John Hollowell sent us this one:
"Of the 3 Isettas we have the best story came from a 60 year old truck
driver who originally got his first Isetta when he was working in a gas
station. The car had been dropped off for repairs. When the owner never came
back for the car the truck driver talked his boss into taking $10.00 per
week out of his check and the Isetta became his first car".
"Our blue Isetta was purchased at a garage sale. My son was 15 at the time
and he restored it over a 6 month period working after school. Now that he is
18 he is driving a 1976 BMW 2002 with air dams,body skirts and a Mekur turbo
that has more than doubled the power".
"When It came time for him to write his essay to get into school he wrote
about the Isetta restoration and I think his story might be the reason that he
was accepted to his school".
For the man who has everything.
Of course, no Isetta storyboard would be complete without getting the football team involved. My cousin Nina graduated from Beaumont (Texas) High School in 1959. There was an extremely overweight girl in her class and who received an Isetta for her graduation present. Even with lookouts posted, no one ever figured out how her car was moved from the parking lot to the front steps of the school ... every day for a week.
Babe Magnet!
While stopped at the filling station one night, a guy and his wife made a U-turn and stopped to check out our car and shoot the bull. Turns out, his Dad had been in the Army in the late 1950's through the early '60's. His job was to inspect containers of soldier's personal belongings that had been shipped back to the US from Europe. One container he opened had the usual stuff in it but as
they got towards the rear, here sat an Isetta full of belongings. Checking his manifest, seems that the Lieutenant had listed his Isetta as a "household appliance". The explanation to his CO must have been an interesting one.
Isetta Tech. Live from Austin, Texas. Copyright 2002-2005.