Goggo - Geschichten_en_v3

Well advanced in years, but still (motor) mobile

Our grandfather, Andreas Wiesheu, was an avid motorcyclist and loved motor vehicles of all kinds. Even when working in the fields, he preferred driving a vehicle while others used their oxen, horses and carts. In the mid 1960’s, shortly before his 80th birthday, his motorcycle quit running.

At the time, we had an old NSU Quickly that we boys were no longer using, so my father gave it to my grandfather. Although he took it immediately, he soon returned it, saying that it was "just a toy" and that he could do nothing with it. Since he still had an old category 4 license that allowed him to drive anything up to 250cc, he went looking for a more suitable vehicle. This he found in an old, used, Goggo Coupe, and, for the first time in his 80 years, he actually drove an automobile. Up until then, his only driving had been his motorcycle, and our famously robust and highly respected Eicher tractor.

Grandpa now roamed the countryside, visiting children and grandchildren, occasionally even making the 10km trip to Freising. But he soon tired of the old, unreliable, Goggo and searched for a better one which he found for sale near Augsburg. To pick up his second Goggo, he took with him a grandson, who already had a driver’s license.

On the way back, he drove the new, well – the newer, Goggo, and the grandson drove the old. But feeling that his grandson, being so much younger, might be a safer driver, suggested that they switch cars. So, on they continued; grandson driving the new, Grandpa driving the old. What he hadn’t considered was that there is an art to driving a Goggo, an art acquired through experience. Experience his grandson did not have. Starting it required nearly full throttle, accompanied by the clutch engaging with a terrible jerk! And a Goggo’s road holding ability is poor, to say the least. Unfortunately, but perhaps not unexpectedly, the young driver lost control of the car and ended up in a ditch. To his great relief, Grandpa watched his grandson climb, unhurt, out of the wrecked vehicle. While his initial reaction was anger - "Better I should have been driving myself!"- happiness at his grandson’s lucky escape soon overcame his hurt and disappointment.

During the next few years, the Goggo was restored, and Grandpa took even longer tours, trips that took him to Regensburg, Fuerstenfeldbruck, and further. By the early seventies he gradually quit driving, preferring to be chauffeured by his grandchildren.


Written down in September, 2012 by Leonhard Maier (born 1953), Giggenhausen.
Translation by Johann Wiesheu and Richard Kramer.

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