Malcolm’s Nobel instinct
Nostalgia drives us to daft decisions. At university in the Eighties I came across a Nobel 200 microcar but it vanished before I could buy it. I hadn’t seen one for sale since, until I opened Classic Car Weekly and there it was: Nobel 200, damaged but complete, 13 miles from new. I couldn’t resist.
A quick call to the seller brought the story that he supplies cars for film and TV and had provided a Nobel 200 for the background of a garage scene, had then sold it, and the TV company had asked for a reshoot. He’d had to find another wrecked Nobel and had prised this one from a family in Belfast who had owned it from new. The story was that the farmer had bought one each for himself and his wife, driven them home from the Shorts factory nearby and put this one in the barn – only for a bale of hay to fall on it, breaking the roof and back window. And there it had stayed.
The story may be apocryphal – there are also stories of unsold Nobels lined up in a Belfast barn for decades, so it could be one of those – but one thing’s for sure, either the barn’s roof fell in or the car was pushed outside for decades because it’s had so much exposure to the elements that the glassfibre roof has largely delaminated and the gelcoat is covered in curled-up half-moons. It’s almost beyond repair and I reckon taking a mould off another Nobel with a good roof to make a complete new section would be the most practical solution.
Even the Sachs engine (shared with the Messerschmitt KR200) has suffered as at some point – the cylinder head has been removed and the barrel left exposed. However, there is clear evidence that the 13 miles recorded is genuine. The unique tyres fitted from new by Nobel still have the mould beading down their centres, though they are completely rotten and unusable, and the blue-painted SACHS lettering on the engine cowling is complete and unfaded.
The story of the Nobel 200 deserves a feature in itself some day; there are parallels to Delorean but 20 years earlier. Entrepreneur York Noble bought the rights to build the German Fuldamobil S7, got Bristol Aircraft to make the bodies and Short Bros & Harland of Belfast to assemble the cars. Huge sales were talked about but they failed to materialise and it all fell apart. Attempts were even made to sell Nobels as kit cars. Mine is one of the last of about 1000 made: chassis 0967.