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Origins
The Lloyd 600 of 1955 sat at the affordable base of Carl Borgward's Bremen empire: a two-cylinder, 600cc four-stroke replacing earlier two-strokes, in a compact body whose fabric-and-plywood origins had given way to steel — though the marque's 'Leukoplastbomber' sticking-plaster nickname endured affectionately. For Germans graduating from motorcycles, the Lloyd was the first proper car: weather-tight, four-wheeled respectability at the price of a big BMW motorcycle, and it sold in the hundreds of thousands, briefly ranking among Germany's best-sellers. The Alexander variant added refinement toward decade's end. Lloyd's fate followed the group's — Borgward's controversial 1961 collapse took the marque down — but the 600 had done its work: a rung on the Wirtschaftswunder's ladder, sized for its moment.
Lloyd LS 600 · Lothar Spurzem · CC BY-SA 2.0 de
