Feature Restoration 1955 Messerschmitt KR200
If You Want to Drive Something Truly Uncommon…Try One of These Post-War Vehicles.
The really tiny cars popular in post-World War II Europe managed few sales in the United States until decades later when certain American drivers began to notice their non-mainstream appeal.
For the 1955 Messerschmitt KR200 featured here or any of its contemporary competition, those two markets could not possibly have been further apart. Known variously as microcars and bubblecars (in this case the “KR” stands for Kabinenroller or “cabin scooter”) they arrived at a time when they were necessary as Europe made its way back from a devastating war. What had not been destroyed was in short supply and while transportation in the years of recovery was needed, private vehicles for the greatest part had to be as utterly basic as possible due to the limited availability of everything from raw materials to the money with which to buy them. So the Messerschmitts, Isettas, Fuldamobils, NSUs and others played a big part in helping many Europeans to return to modern life even if that’s hard to grasp today.
“For those people,” said Paul Kramer, owner of the featured Messerschmitt, “this was the everyday car and yet every time I drive it, I’ve got to think ‘I couldn’t see driving this to work every day unless I worked two blocks away.’
“After the war, they didn’t have steel, they didn’t have gas and everything was so expensive. And the three wheels made them cheaper. They paid taxes on their cars, so three wheels were cheaper. Even though my Isetta’s a four-wheeler, they made a three-wheeler and they did make a four-wheel Messerschmitt, a Tiger.”
From Jet Fighters to Microcars
The little Messerschmitt’s part in helping to put post-war Europe back together is at least slightly ironic, given that its manufacturer was a highly respected German aircraft firm known for its piston-engined fighters as well as some of the earliest successful jets. Not surprisingly, the victorious Allies prohibited Messerschmitt from building aircraft as it had before and during the war.
Messerschmitt, though, had managed to stay in business by producing other products and that placed it in a good position when Fritz Fend was looking for a factory to build the three-wheeled Flitzer microcar he had designed.
By 1955, the KR175 was on sale and to those accustomed to cars of any size, it must have been as shocking for its 175-cubic-centimeter, 9.5-horsepower engine as it was for its motor scooterlike handlebar and tandem seating. And then there was the appearance. Looking much like a child’s tricycle covered by a streamlined body and configured with the single wheel at rear and the two covered wheels outside of the cockpit at front, it was topped off with a Plexiglas dome that tilted to one side for ingress and egress.
The entire package had a distinctly aero quality and given the “Messerschmitt” name, a longstanding urban legend attributes that to the company’s having designed the car around a portion of fuselage from one of its aircraft.
The look survived when the KR200 was introduced for 1955 with the biggest visual difference being the introduction of wheelwells to expose the front tires and a modified design to the canopy. Much more importantly, the Sachs engine was now up to 191cc and 10.2 horsepower which gave the 500-pound Messerschmitt a top speed of 62 miles per hour and fuel economy of 56 miles per gallon, although some sources give considerably higher mpg numbers. There were tradeoffs, such as the canopy’s 360-degree visibility around the car and 180-degree view overhead for which occupants had to accept unrelenting heat on a sunny day, but the Messerschmitt’s pluses made it an excellent choice for drivers still dealing directly with the war’s aftermath. The company sold about 12,000 KR200s in that first year alone and despite corporate changes, the model was continued into 1964.
The KR200 in 1956 carried a list price of $1073 in the United States, the equivalent of $9640 today. Compare that to the 39-miles-pergallon Chevy Spark’s entry-level price of $13,000 and the KR200 seems to have been quite the deal, but then the Spark even in its cheapest form is clearly nowhere near as basic.
Fun In Motion
Messerschmitt advertised its “limousine comfort” and noted that it was “famous throughout the world for its unusual and appealing design.” The first claim is open to interpretation while the second isn’t that far off, but Kramer cited another side to its personality that the Messerschmitt shares with its old competitors.
“They’re just a barrel of laughs,” he observed. “They’re so simple and so complicated at the same time.”
He owns or has owned other microcars including the Isetta, a Goggomobil and a Heinkel that he sold to buy the KR200. He’d had no experience with a Messerschmitt, but being active in the microcar hobby, he had his chance during a meet at the now-closed Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum in Madison, Georgia.
“He had a two-mile test track around the building,” Kramer recalled, “and you could drive all these different kinds of cars. I’d never driven a Messerschmitt and I wanted to, so my wife and I went for a test ride. I went around the track until about the third time, when I was told that you were only supposed to go around once because there were people waiting and as I was getting out of it, I told my wife ‘we are going to have one of these.’ It was just fun.”
Finding It Was Easy
Size aside, the Messerschmitt shares one trait with plenty of other collector cars in that there’s a big difference between wanting one and owning one. In the Messerschmitt’s case, the problem is that of those that did make it here, many were treated as toys and forgotten as soon as their first significant problems appeared. So the real surprise is how Kramer found the feature car within almost walking distance of his home in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
“A friend of mine’s got bunches of them,” he explained. “I was talking to him about it and I said ‘I’m looking for a Messerschmitt. I’d rather have one of yours if one of them is for sale, but if not, I don’t care if I have to go to California. I will have a Messerschmitt.’ He said there were two that he was thinking of selling. I picked one and the deal was made.”
That was five or six years ago and the Messerschmitt looked about the same then as it does today. It was, Kramer said, “a nice driver.” It wasn’t perfect, though, as some non-critical components were missing and there was work by a previous owner that had to be undone. There is, for example, the piano hinge on the right-hand side that allows the canopy to flip completely out of the way. It’s effective, but it’s wrong.
“The hinge is supposed to be hidden on the inside,” Kramer said. “Someone just had this thing and ‘let’s bolt it to the side’ and it worked. It does work and I just never did anything with it.”
There’s also the wrong trim on the nose, some of which is missing.
“Some of the models were twotoned,” Kramer said, “and someone put that stick-on chrome on the front fenders to mimic where the real pieces should be. They did a good job and it’s basically where it should be, but it’s not correct and so if and when I ever do the car, I will probably take them off and just paint the fenders the way it should be.”
Replacing the hinge would be a project more involved than removing the trim and repainting the car, but he’s already dealt with a fix that’s comparable at the very least. It addressed another change made by an earlier owner and was every bit as wrong as the piano hinge.
“Someone had just molded in a taillight lens with filler,” Kramer said, “and it was cracking and it wasn’t correct. I found a set of chrome (housings) that came from Germany. They’re correct, and I took off the big license plate light that they’d had on there because the taillights have license-plate clear lenses.”
While he was at it, he added a modification to the taillights aimed at improving the Messerschmitt’s visibility to other drivers, a change that wouldn’t seem as significant on a less unconventional vehicle.
“It’s a double bulb,” Kramer explained, “and I made one of them a turn signal for safety, even though the turn signals are on the sides and you can see them from the back.
“The brake light is that one little beehive orange lens in the middle. That’s useless, so I’m careful in traffic.”
Equally ineffective are the headlights whether in their modified form or as they were when the car was delivered.
“Someone put 1157 taillight bulbs in them as high- and low-beams,” Kramer said, “and they were useless. Even with the right bulbs, they’re not very bright. They look like sealed beams, but they’re not. It’s a regular bulb that you put in there. It’s not like the Isetta. That has sealed beams and that’s the only one that you can really see well with.”
On the Messerschmitt, he agreed, they serve almost as markers so that other drivers can see the car at night.
Some Microcar Quirks
His comment about the vehicle being simultaneously simple and complicated is nicely illustrated by his descriptions of some of his experiences with the Messerschmitt’s drivetrain and mechanical components.
“The rear suspension units were bad,” Kramer said. “The suspension is a rubber doughnut, basically, and there are two of them. They were getting pretty rough and if they spin, they can do damage. The shock mount is part of the chain case and if that snaps off, you’re done, so I got the two suspension units from a guy in the Netherlands and changed them out.”
Up front, he said, the suspension is simply an A-frame design with shock absorbers and it works well, but since the Messerschmitt is steered with a handlebar, there’s another consideration and this one would never come to mind for a restorer accustomed to conventional cars or even motorcycles. It revealed itself when positioning the Messerschmitt for the photos seen here and Kramer’s direction seemed at first to be a bit of microcar humor
“If the vehicle’s not moving,” he explained, “you grab the front wheels and turn them because if you use the steering, the handlebar will bend and break. The handlebar is like an upside-down airplane tiller and people who move them around, who just grab it and push down on it or pull up on one side of it end up bending it. Mine is cracked, but there’s still steel inside, but they will bend. So if you’re not moving, you just grab the front wheel and turn it. It’s so easy and you don’t hurt it.”
He’s right. It’s easy and unquestionably smarter than risking damage, but like so much about the Messerschmitt, there’s more.
“When you’re backing them up,” Kramer explained, “you’ve got to start them in reverse, and sometimes it’s easier to just get out, turn the wheels and push. It’s quicker. And it’s got four speeds in reverse, too.
“You shut the engine off and when it stops, you start it backward. It’s a two-stroke; there are two sets of points in there. You turn the key the other way. There are idiot lights, for want of a better word. If one light’s on, you’re going forward, if both lights are on, you’re going backward. You can shift it going backward because you’ve got four speeds in reverse. A two-stroke doesn’t have conventional valves and it can spin either way.”
The Messerschmitt does have an electric starter, but in a tight parking space, turning the wheels by hand and pushing the car back and forth makes more sense than the stop-andrestart ritual, not to mention the risk of damaging the handlebar by succumbing to the temptation to turn the handlebar “carefully” while not in motion.
Shifting in Reverse
There’s another temptation, however, and it centers on that four-speed transmission that as Kramer mentioned, can be shifted through its range when the engine is running in reverse.
“It’s scary,” he confessed. “It’s like a controlled crash. I’ve done it. I got to third gear once in a parking lot. You’re all over the place. You’re trying to look behind you and the mirrors aren’t great. And then you’re trying to steer it as you’re trying to look behind you. It’s just weird.”
Driving fast enough in reverse to shift the progressive transmission is probably something that many owners wouldn’t even consider and realistically, why should they? Driving it forward is fun enough
“It’s neat when I go to a cruise night,” Kramer said, “because everybody walks over to it and leaves all the expensive cars. Then people ask ‘did you drive it here?’ And I say ‘I didn’t carry it on my back, did I?’”
It Stays With Traffic… Sometimes
Its engine might be tiny, but since it weighs far less than a half-ton, the Messerschmitt can handle city traffic and to some extent can handle the open road. Kramer said that he’s had the feature car up to about 45 miles per hour on a long straightaway and that speed calls for concentration.
“With the one wheel in the back,” he explained, “you’ve always got the crown on the road. You’re always fishtailing back and forth because you’re always falling off of the high spot in the road. You’ve got your front wheels which are out and your one (rear) wheel in the middle. If you get a road that’s had heavy truck traffic, you’re just wiggle-woggling all the way down the road, you’re always steering it back and forth.”
Wiggle-woggling or not, the Messerschmitt’s trips are more than merely around the block.
“We were in Cape May (New Jersey) with it to a microcar rally,” Kramer said. “I had the Goggomobil; my son was driving the Messerschmitt. It’s pretty level in some spots and we were gassing on it, so we were almost keeping up with traffic, but they were probably going slow because we were in the way.”
Like every other car in the world, the Messerschmitt has its limits and he pointed to one that seems mildly surprising but actually makes sense. He’s never checked the fuelconsumption precisely and so he can say only that it’s good, making the problem one of range because the Messerschmitt has a three-gallon tank plus another gallon or so of reserve. That calls for planning, he said, and not just for the obvious reason.
“You need to make sure there are gas stations,” he explained, “and then you have to mix the oil with the gas. You shouldn’t just dump the oil in the tank, either. A friend of mine from Florida did that. He dumped the oil and then he got sidetracked and the oil went right into the carburetor and it wouldn’t start. If you can get the oil and gas sloshing, then it’s OK, but he couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t start. Then we opened the carburetor up and took all the oil out of it.”
Not a Hill Climb Contestant
An actual trip, even one as short as 100 miles, adds another requirement as he said that a route with hills to be climbed demands an allotment of additional time.
“The slightest little hill,” he said, “and it dies. There is no torque. It’s only 10 horsepower. My garden tractor’s a 26-horsepower twocylinder. This is a 10-horsepower one-cylinder. My garden tractor would probably make the trip more easily.”
The Messerschmitt rides rough and it’s noisy, Kramer said, but again, it’s not exactly a Chevy Spark or even a Volkswagen Beetle. Other cars crowd it—usually innocently—as their drivers stare at the Messerschmitt or try to photograph it while passing. Kramer said that those who see it are amazed and a few can actually identify it. He said most who can do so were in Germany or England in the postwar years and tell him they recall seeing Messerschmitts on the road, but some recall more.
“The best one,” Kramer said, “this guy must’ve been 90 years old, a sweet old guy. He came over and said ‘I remember driving one of them’ and I asked him ‘do you want a ride?’ I gave him a ride and he was ecstatic. I had to help him out of it and he was smiling. He said ‘that was so much fun.’”
Kramer understands that completely and said that of the different cars he owns, the microcars are the favorites when it comes to driving. So it’s no great feat to deduce what’s standing in the way of the Messerschmitt’s restoration.
“I say I’m going to do it every year,” Kramer explained, “but then I start driving it all the time and having fun. I just retired, so maybe, but I don’t know. I want to do the Isetta first, then one at a time, and I’ve been threatening to do that for years. Then again, summer comes and I drive it. I’m always driving something. Tomorrow night, I don’t know which one I’m going to take to the cruise night.”
It’s Odd? Well, That’s Great
Given that he eventually will get to the Messerschmitt, he already has some of the parts he’ll need. When the Microcar Museum closed, he said, he was able to buy a complete interior, brake shoes and drums, and the rubber gasket for the canopy. He’s also found motor mounts, a fuse box and a set of bumpers. The tires on it are new because they’re a popular size for trailers and available at Wal-Mart.
Among the parts he needs are the correct hinge for the canopy and much of the chrome trim. Needing anything for the car seems like a nearly insurmountable problem, but that’s only true for those who don’t know where to look.
“You join the Messerschmitt Club in England,” Kramer said. “That’s the best. They have a parts department.”
The Messerschmitt Owners’ Club’s web site states that it “has an unbroken history stretching back to 1956 in the days when our members were able to buy new Messerschmitts and use them as daily transport.
Formed largely for social purposes around regular meets and a magazine, the club’s ethos gradually changed after the cars went out of production in 1964 and spare parts supply started to become a problem.”
All of that leads to the conclusion that finding a restorable Messerschmitt is likely to be a challenge and completeness is extremely important. Rust damage is a close second and Kramer said that poor sealing leads to badly rotted floors. But surprisingly, a missing or damaged canopy isn’t a nightmare because reproductions are available. While it’s hard to imagine that there are no restorable examples left, he said that he hasn’t heard of one.
No doubt a Messerschmitt isn’t for everybody, but there are those for whom it’s a perfect match. Kramer is one of them.
“The odder the better to me,” he said. “It looks like an airplane, you roast in the sun with that stinking canopy, there’s no air coming in and the passenger sits behind you. It’s just odd.
“But I’ve always gone for the odd stuff. I like to be different.”
