Borgward Is Dead Again

Photo: Borgward

Back in 2015, Borgward announced it was back from the dead. The name and trademark had been sold to a Chinese company, and less than a year later, Zombie Borgward had a car to sell called the BX7. It didn’t last long, though, as the undead automaker is officially dead again.

Autocar reports that Borgward has declared bankruptcy and is looking for the court’s approval to liquidate its assets. The company reportedly owes creditors more than $750 million, with ownership currently split between Foton, a truck division of BAIC and Ucar, a Chinese mobility company.

While Borgward was officially headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, pretty much everything from engineering to production and even sales were done in China. Since their revival in 2015 and the reveal of the Audi-like BX7, they added three other crossovers to their lineup: the BX3, BX5, and BX6. And in 2019, they launched an electric version of the BX7 called the BXi7. An electric version of the BX5 was also planned but it doesn’t appear that the BXi5 ever made it into production.

In addition to the Chinese market, Borgward sold cars in a couple of other countries including Malaysia and Nepal, and it slowly expanded into Europe. By 2018, it announced plans to enter the Irish and UK markets. And while it was never a sales giant, it actually did sell a decent number of cars. At its peak in 2019, total sales were reportedly around 55,000. That same year, Foton sold 67 percent of Borgward to Ucar.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, sales figures dropped significantly, with Borgward moving fewer than 9,000 cars that year. The company never recovered, and over the last two years, it’s been slowly dying. Now the final nail is in the coffin. Unless someone else tries to bring Borgward back from the dead again in the future.