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Monday 25 May 2020

Isotta

 

by Chris Wevers - licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
 

Wrentham, with the promise of a try-out later, rode with Travers and saw the countryside through the screen and along the sinister radiator of the long Isotta.

“The fact of the matter is,” said Travers, “you want to drive the Isotta. You’ve been itching to break your neck ever since you clapped eyes on the damn thing.” 

Christopher Bush - Murder at Fenwold (1930)

“What’s an Isotta?” I asked myself while reading this Golden Age detective story. Not being a car buff I didn’t know and initially a picture of the Isetta popped into my mind. Nope - wrong era but a quick web search brought up a more appropriate image.

Blimey - what a car. Makes the story far more interesting if I imagine myself zooming along country lanes in one of those, puffing casually on my pipe while solving the mystery with careless aplomb.

3 comments:

wiggiatlarge said...

An interesting and glorious history for this company, I did some research awhile back for a piece on between the wars luxury cars, the company that started in the early 1900s also made rather wonderful aero engines V-12s many supercharged and were early converts to OHC layouts.

Scrobs. said...

Like the car Simon Templar drove, a Hirondel!

Had to 'Wiki' it to see whether one ever existed - it didn't...

A K Haart said...

Wiggia - even my tiny bit of research showed it to be an interesting company. If I were seriously rich I'd consider buying one of their cars.

Scrobs - maybe that's the value of web searches.