It may be one of the smallest cars ever made, but the little Messerschmitt KR200 occupies a huge place in the heart of Kim Denison.
The tiny German microcar is memories made in metal – of teenage independence, youthful courting, hair-raising journeys, weddings and, most of all, of an indefatigable mother with a deep passion for the car.
It was the summer of 1970 when the bug-eyed three-wheeler, dwarfed even by a Mini, came into Kim’s life, bought for the 17-year-old who was forbidden by his parents from riding a motorbike.
Priced out of buying his first choice and the car of his young dreams, a Morgan three-wheeler, the family began scouring the classifieds for the next best thing.
Now, 48 years on, the car they found and bought for £50 remains an integral part of family life, a cherished heirloom that’s destined to one day pass down to Kim’s son Alistair.
“I’ll never sell it, and when it passes to Alistair there’s absolutely no way he would ever get rid of it,” says Kim, who runs a PR and marketing agency near Colchester.
She absolutely adored it, as we do
“The car is very reminiscent of my mother and how passionate she was about the car and about looking after it. She absolutely adored it, as we do, and she was a member of the Messerschmitt Owners Club right up until her death.”
Marjorie Denison, who died at the age of 89 in 2013, was the driving force behind the family, and loved the car bought for her teenage son so much she and Kim’s father, John, bought another one each.
“My mother was ex land army, and also a trained teacher and nurse,” says Kim. “She was still swinging a chainsaw at 85, and was out baling hay in her Fordson Major tractor on her eight-acre smallholding in her 80s.
“She was totally driven, the powerful one in the family, and the Messerschmitts were very much a part of who she was.
“We had three eventually – father’s was a canvas drop-head, and there was also an unusual one with a fibreglass flat top. In the 60s and 70s people were making all sorts of things for vehicles.”
But back to 1970 and, while Kim’s friends were all hopping on motorbikes and scooters, his parents wanted him to have “something a bit sturdier”.
“My dream car, my heart-throb, was a Morgan three wheeler – you used to be able to pick one up for about £100 because no-one really wanted to know about vintage vehicles at the time,” he says.
“But by the time we started looking, the prices started to rocket and it became unattainable. My parents said ‘well, the next best thing is to go for a Messerschmitt.’ There was a Messerschmitt club not that many miles away from us, so there were a lot of them in the area.
“We would drive around the country to look at advertised Schmitts and finally found one that was manufactured in 1962 but had sat in a showroom in Brentwood for three years before being bought by the first owner.
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The last new Messerschmitt
“They stopped making them in 1964 and, apparently, this was the last new Messerschmitt to be registered in this country, but not until 1965.
“My mother kept the original receipt for the car – at £50 it was very cheap motoring. An old banger would have cost about £100, I would have thought. That’s why these were seen as cheap runabouts.”
Also known as the Kabinenroller (scooter with cabin), the car was designed by aircraft engineer Fritz Fend, who approached Messerschmitt with the idea of manufacturing small motor vehicles while the company was banned from making aeroplanes after the second world war.
Based on the Fend Flitzer invalid carriage, the new KR175 was quickly superseded by the larger-engined KR200, which proved an instant hit with almost 12,000 built in the first year of production.
Despite a claimed power output of just 9.9hp from the 191cc, two stroke engine, the car was capable of 56mph, testament to its light weight and low aerodynamic drag – as you’d expect from an aircraft designer.
The cars were equipped with indicators, a tiny windscreen wiper (“averagely effective,” according to Kim), a motorbike-style, cable-operated gearbox and a heater which pumped hot air into the cabin indirectly from heat generated from around the exhaust.
“I must admit, I was a bit of laughing stock really in this little three-wheeler while my mates had bikes and scooters, but the difference was I was the only one that would be dry when it rained!” laughs Kim.
Hair-raising to drive
“It was quite hair-raising to drive to start with because you are cocooned in a little shell very low to the ground and the steering is very, very positive, so just one slight twitch on the handlebars and she would be over the other side of the road.
“But they were very sophisticated little cars. The electronics were incredibly sophisticated for the time and only a handful of people knew how it all worked.
“There’s no reverse gear, but because it has two sets of points you can get all four gears in reverse by stopping the engine, pushing the key in a little further and starting the engine again in reverse. But it’s so light we tended to just push it into place.”
Because of aerodynamics, the car was said to be faster going backwards than forwards!
To start with Kim drove the car on a provisional licence with L-plates, which meant having to carry a passenger with a full driving licence in the car’s little rear seat.
“The law around three wheelers was always quite murky with the police,” he remembers. “In a Schmitt, you sat one behind the other, and subsequently the Messerschmitt club were trying to get the law changed so you could drive it on your own because the accompanying fully licensed driver could only sit in the back, out of reach of any of the controls and unable to correct the driver should anything go wrong. It made the law pointless. They were desperately trying to get the law changed but they were unsuccessful.
“What I did was take the back seat out and when stopped by the police I said ‘I can’t have a passenger, it’s only got one seat’. They went ‘hmmm’, went away and had a think about it and eventually said ‘no, you can’t do that’.
“Luckily, they didn’t do me – this was the 70s when all sorts of stuff was going on. It was not as though I was going to kill anybody in the Messerschmitt – you’d bump into a dog and the car is going to come off worse.”
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An apprentice artworker for an engraving company, Kim would use the car for the eight-mile daily commute to and from Witham, in Essex.
On one such morning drive to work Kim had the most remarkable, and terrifying, escape only made possible by the car’s diminutive proportions when attempting to overtake an articulated lorry.
“One morning I was driving along a stretch of main road on my way to work and had an articulated lorry in front of me pootling along,” he remembers.
“The Messerschmitt hasn’t got a lot of acceleration at all, but I thought I had plenty of time to get past. I only got halfway past and a car travelling really fast in the opposite direction was bearing down on me.
“All I could do was tuck under his truck, so I ducked the Messerschmitt underneath so that the wing was just showing beyond its width, and when car went past I pulled out from underneath.
“I always remember the guy looked in his mirror to see my car emerging from underneath his lorry. I could see the whites of his eyes – he could not believe what had just happened.
“He gave me a couple of toots and I was on my way. I was so lucky, if he had accelerated he would have crushed me with his back wheel and if he’d braked he’d have crushed me with front wheel.”
There were lighter moments too, including a road-trip to a beach party at Aldeburgh with an uninvited guest.
“I always remember going to a party at Aldeburgh – we were heading towards the beach and overtook a guy, another young hippy, who was on a moped,” says Kim, now 65.
“As I passed, he leaned out and grabbed hold of my parcel rack. I drove all the way there with this guy hanging on the back, and we all went off to the party on the beach. I didn’t know him, and at the time it was all a big laugh. Great fun.”
Kim was still driving the car daily when he met his future wife, Dawn, the pair reunited as adults having been friends in their school days.
“She and I were on the same school bus, though she was going to a different school to myself,” he says.
“We knew each other and quite liked each other when we were only 14 and 12, but it was not until I was 21 that we got together.”
The Messerschmitt had a bit-part role to play, carrying Kim to his job in Witham, where he bumped into Dawn walking up to the Post Office.
“Her parents were the original designers and builders of the Ginetta cars in Witham, I saw her there and we got talking and eventually got together and got married,” adds Kim, who would take his future wife out in the little car she describes as “claustrophobic”.
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After four years of regular use, the KR200 and the other two Messerschmitts became weekend runabouts, kept ticking over as other, more practical cars, came and went over the years.
“My mother used it at weekends because she and my father had other cars and we just sort of swapped and changed, took the pressure off the main cars, jumped in the Messerschmitts and drove them around,” says Kim.
“By 2007 we had got rid of the other two – they were just in sheds, just lying about rotting so we sold them and retained this one.
“It was sent off for a big restoration and respray some years ago, because Messerschmitts are fairly well-known for rotting quite easily if you leave them.”
The car retains its original distinctive upholstery, featuring mock snakeskin trim, but that too is due for refurbishment.
“Only certain cars had this mock snakeskin strip,” says Kim. “It’s looking a little bit tired now and I’ve found a chap in France who specialises in Messerschmitts – he has a collection himself – and he builds the whole kit for upholstery, including the snakeskin.
“I contacted him about three years ago and he made a pack for us and brought it all the way from France, but I still haven’t had it done yet.”
These days, the car is used as many classics are – mostly covered up in the garage but brought out to play on the odd sunny day and for the occasional show.
When it does hit the road, the reaction from other motorists and passers-by is one of pure delight.
“It’s just amazing when we go on the roads in it – the amount of people that wave and hoot, it’s just extraordinary, to the point of being dangerous!” says Kim.
“We’ve had cars almost go head on when flashing and waving, you really have to be so careful. But it’s good to create that amount of interest.”
Over the years, the car has taken a firm grip on the hearts of multiple generations of the Denison family, though not everyone has been quite as taken by its unique charms.
“Both of my grand-daughters, aged five and two, have been in it,” says Kim. “We got them in there and shut the lid. One was a bit terrified and the other was very happy. The two-year-old didn’t like the noise, it really worried her. She was saying ‘It’s loud Gramps, it’s too loud.’”
The groom and best man turned up in the Messerschmitt at Kim’s daughter Rebecca’s wedding, and it’s on stand by to repeat the feat at Alistair’s nuptials later this year.
Why only on standby? Because at long last, Kim has realised his dream of owning a Morgan three-wheeler, but one manufactured in 2018, not in the 1920 or 30s.
“I promised myself that if I could ever afford one, I would buy one,” says Kim, who headed to a show at Docklands Wharf as soon as Morgan announced plans to reintroduce the car.
Not that everything went entirely to plan.
“We put down a deposit, waited two years to have it built, and it was awful,” he says. “It kept breaking down, things falling off, dreadful. The early ones were rushed out, that was the problem with them.
“Nearly two years ago the car broke down yet again, and the garage picked it up to take it away and fix it. Half an hour later I got a phone call at work to say ‘your car’s gone. The trailer caught fire and your car is burnt out completely’.
“It’s taken two years fighting to get the right insurance money, but we’ve ordered another one and it’s due any day now.
“They’ve upgraded everything, all the old problems have been fixed and the 2018 car should be heaven.
“I cannot explain what it’s like – it’s the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.”
But while the shiny new Morgan may represent a boyhood dream come true, it can’t compete with the trusty old Messerschmitt’s enduring legacy of nearly half a century of memories.
Maybe one day it will, but for now it’s the little car adored by mother, son, grandson and granddaughter that holds the key to a family’s hearts.
