1963 Glas 1500

Here´s a 1963 Glas 1500 brochure. It´s a pre-production brochure of this car from Frankfurt Auto Show 1963. In fact, the car that was announced in this brochure never saw life in this form. The 1500 was meant to be the (very much) bigger brother of the famous “Goggo”, a tiny scooter with two-stroke engine that was sold several 100.000 times in post-war Germany. In the early 1960,s its producer, the Glas company in Bavaria, began to offer some larger cars. The first results were the Glas Isar and the Glas 1300. In 1963, they developed an even larger car with a 1,5 Litre engine. Design for this car was done by Pietro Frua in Torino, technics came from the in-house engineering ateliers. At the Frankfurt Motor Show 1963, the prototype was shown: A big four door sedan called Glas 1500 with a 1,5 Litre four cylinder (This brochure). In the following months, further development work took place. Soon the engineers found that the 1,5 Litre engine was too weak for a heavy car like this so the engine was bored out to 1,7 Litres. This engine was finally chosen for the production cars. In 1964, production started, and the car was offered as Glas 1700. Sales were a big disappointment. From 1964 to 1967, a mere 14.000 copies were built. In 1967, BMW took over Glas. The Bavarian production of the 1700 was stopped, and the assembly line was transferred to South Africa where production continued until 1976. Over there, the cars were sold as BMW 1800, 1804 and 2000, featuring upgraded engines and a slightly different exterior design (once again by Frua).