Microcars and Bubblecars

[TexRex]

Oh, believe me, I'm familiar with the Beutler Porsches.



And while I wouldn't have suspected Beutler was responsible for the 500 Sport's sheetmetal, I see it. A Sport Coupé prototype was built by them as well, and a bit more of the Beutler characteristics show through.

If I'm honest, a part of me suspected outsourced bodywork, but rather than Beutler, I was thinking Rometsch--of course that's likely due to the side trim resembling that of the Lawrence.

Edit: Oh, hey...

Spoiler

 

[Turbo]

1968-1971 Subaru 360 Young SS, a souped-up variant of the Subaru 360, and one of the earliest performance-oriented kei cars. It weighed 410 and was powered by a 423cc inline-two-cylinder making 38hp. The Young SS is sort of like the Japanese version of the Abarth Fiat 500 695 SS.




It even featured in both Gran Turismo 2 and Enthusia.

 

[Populuxe]

I used to have a lot of fun pushing the 360 around the Seattle circuit in GT2.

 

[Populuxe]

If you're in the market for your very own Inter 175, just like the one I posted about a while ago, it's being auctioned by RM Sotheby's with no reserve.

 

[TexRex]

The Zwerg sure is nifty, but it's no Mopetta...

Speaking of which...



A Petrolicious video posted in another thread turned my attention to their YouTube channel, where I found the above.

Edit: Added "thread."

 

[Populuxe]

Speaking of which...



A Petrolicious video posted in another turned my attention to their YouTube channel, where I found the above.

Petrolicious is a great site. All their videos are worth checking out.

 

[TexRex]

Petrolicious is a great site. All their videos are worth checking out.

I certainly appreciate the site, even if I don't visit it more, but I'm not particularly fond of YouTube.

 

[Populuxe]

I certainly appreciate the site, even if I don't visit it more, but I'm not particularly fond of YouTube.

I can't blame you. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy in their comments section.

 

[TexRex]

Howsabout a Raleigh Safety Seven? Powered by a 742cc side-valve V-twin, it could supposedly hit 55mph back in the mid '30s. Name's a bit peculiar though; steering's by way of a solid shaft from the front fork assembly and aimed right at the driver's upper torso.

 

[Populuxe]

Very nice. I've been tempted to make a thread just for 3-wheelers.

 

[Populuxe]

I made the mistake of diving down the rabbit hole of VW prototypes and I may never come back.

1955 Volkswagen EA 48 prototype.
VW started thinking to themselves that they needed a car below the VW in the marketplace to compete with other sub-1000cc cars like the Citroën 2CV, Fiat 500 and others. Their idea was to cut the Beetle's flat-4 in half and mount it in the front. With a small bump in displacement, it gave them 700cc. It used MacPherson strut front suspension just a couple years after it had been invented, making this the first use of the technology in a FWD application. They planned on making this as cheaply as possible, so there was no rear hatch or even trunklid. The tires, 4.80x13, were designed to be small so they wouldn't impinge on interior room. All of this was two years before Alec Issigonis' briliant Mini was released. VW passed on building it when the German Interior Secretary, under pressure from Borgward, warned them that thousands of jobs would be lost from other small car manufacturers.

 

[TexRex]

I made the mistake of diving down the rabbit hole of VW prototypes and I may never come back.

1955 Volkswagen EA 48 prototype.
VW started thinking to themselves that they needed a car below the VW in the marketplace to compete with other sub-1000cc cars like the Citroën 2CV, Fiat 500 and others. Their idea was to cut the Beetle's flat-4 in half and mount it in the front. With a small bump in displacement, it gave them 700cc. It used MacPherson strut front suspension just a couple years after it had been invented, making this the first use of the technology in a FWD application. They planned on making this as cheaply as possible, so there was no rear hatch or even trunklid. The tires, 4.802x13, were designed to be small so they wouldn't impinge on interior room. All of this was two years before Alec Issigonis' briliant Mini was released. VW passed on building it when the German Interior Secretary, under pressure from Borgward, warned them that thousands of jobs would be lost from other small car manufacturers.

It's worth noting that Gustav Mayer, the project's lead, designed two engines for the car, and that indeed both are represented in the pictures above, in two different cars.

The 700cc example is depicted from above, with the fan being driven directly by the front of the crank (like later Type 3s, T4s and vans), while a 600cc iteration, sharing the 74mm bore and 69mm stroke of the production 1200s at that time, is shown by itself and from beneath the other car; its fan was driven by a belt, predicating the layout that would be used by Ferdinand Porsche for the 356 Carrera motors and the sixes that followed.

Very nice. I've been tempted to make a thread just for 3-wheelers.

I'm certainly in no position to tell you not to, but I'm inclined to say there are plenty of threads that would welcome such vehicles. In the interest of full disclosure, while I appreciate early examples from a time when something of the sort wouldn't be significantly less practical than its four-wheeled counterparts and took advantage of exemptions made for its "3/4-ness," part of my motivation for not wanting yet another thread is my utter disdain for those T-Rex and Slingshot "toys." Death rattle rehashes of old models (*cough* *cough* Morgan *cough* *cough*) don't sway me either. But I digress...



Edit: I'm not an angry person, I swear.

 

[homeforsummer]

Death rattle rehashes of old models (*cough* *cough* Morgan *cough* *cough*)

Hey, that's a little unfair It's one of the few properly small cars you can still buy, after all. It's still among the most involving cars I've ever driven too, even if driving it without a helmet verges on the painful. The appeal of cars like it only grows for me as proper driving interaction and enjoyment at low speeds gets harder and harder to find in modern cars. Surely that's why we like the kind of cars that get posted in this thread - they're unique, basic, mechanically simple and aesthetically intriguing, something I think the 3-Wheeler absolutely nails.

 

[TexRex]

Goggomobil T250, produced by Hans Glas GmbH.

A 245cc 2-stroke inline twin in the rear sends a whopping 13.6hp through a 4-speed (with optional electromagnetic pre-selector functionality) to the rear wheels.

The T250 would be joined by a T300 and T400 with larger engines (293cc and 392cc respectively), as well as a "TS" coupé variant. A Goggomobil Dart (featured on GTP's very own Cool Wall) was also built, albeit by a different company based in Australia using existing Glas mechanicals.

Hans Glas GmbH even built a significantly larger "GT," which would be adopted by BMW as a result of the company changing hands, and this vehicle marks the origin of BMW's inline engines being situated at an angle rather than vertical, as it was necessary to allow for a lower hood height for the GT.

Hey, that's a little unfair It's one of the few properly small cars you can still buy, after all. It's still among the most involving cars I've ever driven too, even if driving it without a helmet verges on the painful. The appeal of cars like it only grows for me as proper driving interaction and enjoyment at low speeds gets harder and harder to find in modern cars. Surely that's why we like the kind of cars that get posted in this thread - they're unique, basic, mechanically simple and aesthetically intriguing, something I think the 3-Wheeler absolutely nails.

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View attachment 716402​

Oh I'm well aware that it's not fair, but it's how I feel. It's not a kneejerk reaction, either, as I've formed this opinion over a number of years (When was the "3-Wheeler" announced?) and it's been absorbed into my "retro money-grab" view of car companies.

Had the model never left production (production by Morgan standards, anyway) in the way that their four-wheeled counterparts have stayed, I probably wouldn't feel the same way, but the reintroduction strikes me as a "Hey, we used to build something like that!" response to the aforementioned T-Rex.

Another factor is that I appreciate the Ford-powered F4 and F2 models far more than the Matchless/J.A.P V-twin cars, and maybe I'm a little bitter about which was chosen to be reintroduced.

You're absolutely right about what the cars offer, though, and I certainly appreciate the acknowledgement that we like little cars the way we do, because while they're rarely truly attractive, they ooze charm.

 

[homeforsummer]

Just got back from the Geneva motor show, where I had a quick look around a modern-day (but retro-inspired) microcar - the Microlino

No prizes for guessing what it's inspired by, but it's actually quite nicely done, both in terms of styling and actually quality. The quasi-retro steering wheel looks a bit out of place - something a little more modern to match the modernised exterior would work, or something really stylised (google the Ford 021C) - but I've sat in loads of these startup company EVs before and usually they're let down massively by quality and attention to detail, whereas this wasn't. The big opening front door felt pretty solid and there was lots of neat detailing - those headlight pods had mirrors on the other end, for example.

It's billed as an urban EV so speed is fairly low - 56mph, and 0-30mph in 5 seconds - but the larger of two battery packs is good for about 130 miles, which would be plenty for an around-town car. It's priced at 12,000 Euros (about $15k or £10,700) which is semi-reasonable - less than most EVs but only a little less than a Smart Fortwo which is a bigger, safer and more complete product.

I remain to be convinced about the concept of the "urban EV", as in Europe at least the answer to overcrowded cities isn't cars in the first place - though I'm sure parking would improve and the air would be better if people one-for-one swapped larger cars for these. But I'm always charmed by the kind of utopian scenario that might welcome such vehicles - provided I could stash away something fun as a weekend car too.

 

[homeforsummer]

Reading an old issue of a car mag today and was reminded of the Secma QT 500:

Produced by the French company Secma. Uses a half-litre, two-cylinder Lombardini four-stroke engine, 21bhp, rear-wheel drive and a manual gearbox. Economy quoted at 70mpg, top speed as 75mph, and sub-400kg, which I believe makes it a quadricycle under European law - think the same regs that the Renault Twizy is sold under.

 

[ScottPuss20]

I made the mistake of diving down the rabbit hole of VW prototypes and I may never come back.

1955 Volkswagen EA 48 prototype.
VW started thinking to themselves that they needed a car below the VW in the marketplace to compete with other sub-1000cc cars like the Citroën 2CV, Fiat 500 and others. Their idea was to cut the Beetle's flat-4 in half and mount it in the front. With a small bump in displacement, it gave them 700cc. It used MacPherson strut front suspension just a couple years after it had been invented, making this the first use of the technology in a FWD application. They planned on making this as cheaply as possible, so there was no rear hatch or even trunklid. The tires, 4.80x13, were designed to be small so they wouldn't impinge on interior room. All of this was two years before Alec Issigonis' briliant Mini was released. VW passed on building it when the German Interior Secretary, under pressure from Borgward, warned them that thousands of jobs would be lost from other small car manufacturers.

That doesn't look like a car built in 1955...

 

[TexRex]

That doesn't look like a car built in 1955...

How old does it look to you?

 

[Turbo]

That doesn't look like a car built in 1955...

Yes it does...

 

[TexRex]

The biggest stumbling block for making the case for an earlier example is the windshield; curved glass wasn't really a thing on production cars until the early '50s, though the fact that it's a prototype helps matters. Indeed, the Cisitalia 202 featured a curved windshield as a prototype, but a butted 2-piece design was made available to the public in 1947.

Something later than 1955 might be justifiable in the case of some Soviet and East German deathtraps, but remember this is Volkswagen we're talking about.

 

[niky]

It wasn't widespread, but there were curved windshield cars in the late 30's and through the 40's (but yes, the 50's was when it really took off).

The whippletree wiper was patented by John W. Anderson, of Anco wipers, in 1945. This arguably helped pave the way for the standardization of curved front glass. Several manufacturers began offering new curved windshield vehicles in the years following that.

If there was a European patent earlier than that, I wouldn't know. It took me weeks of research to find that one.

 

[TexRex]

It wasn't widespread, but there were curved windshield cars in the late 30's and through the 40's.

Well, yeah, but when a company like Chrysler uses it on only 100 or so of its ultra-luxury, convention-defying 9-passenger Custom Imperial Airflows, and indeed creates a model designation ("CW") to acknowledge the unique feature, it's surely far from the norm.

 

[Turbo]

Chrysler

ultra-luxury

Sorry, I just had to.

 

[homeforsummer]

Found a bunch of photos I took of a modern-day microcar I drove a few years back.

I'm a big fan of this generation Smart - I think I drove every variant short of the regular turbocharged car (the one which the US mostly got) - which means a naturally-aspirated 1-litre, the 0.8-litre turbodiesel, the 100-ish horsepower Brabus, and the model above, the Electric Drive.

The only one I didn't really like was the NA 1-litre. It didn't have enough power to overcome the Smart's primary failing, the automated manual gearbox. The Brabus was quick enough between the gears (seriously, it was quite brisk - 0-62mph in about 9sec, and consider that those 9 seconds include a few quite slow gearchanges) that each new gear felt like a new rush and it made an interesting sound, while the diesel's low-revs torque meant you changed gear less in the first place. The regular petrol though didn't have much acceleration, so every gearchange pause felt like it took an age.

The Brabus was fun in general. It was a car that really needed technique, because the stability control could cut in pretty soon. If you drove really smoothly, then you could clip along quite nicely without waking the ESP up. The diesel was ridiculously frugal - an easy 60mpg US/70mpg UK, probably the only car that could get realistically close to my old Honda Insight on that front, and being a diesel didn't require as much technique as the Honda.

As for the Electric Drive, that felt like the ideal-world Smart. No gearchange pauses, fairly good acceleration, quiet, smooth... even the ride was probably the best of this generation Smart - I guess the weight of the batteries compressed the springs beyond an initial harsh point or something.

Above all, it was a good illustration of how useful a genuinely small car can be. It's narrow, so you feel like you have more space on the road, and you can dive through gaps you might think twice about in anything else. It's short, which means parking is the easiest thing in the world, and because it's tall-ish you don't feel as vulnerable as you might expect and there's pretty good visibility. The latest Smart is a better car but doesn't feel quite as miniature as this one (though with a tighter turning radius it's even easier to park...).

 

[05XR8]

Sorry, I just had to.

And rich Corinthian leather...

 

[TexRex]

Friday Foursome

It's been a hot minute since a contribution to this thread has been made, so I've got a quartet of diminutive delights from 1947--a pair of French beauties and a couple of Italian stallions, one with a connection to champion thoroughbreds and the other with a German heart. Fair warning, however, because one of these things is not like the others.

1947 Julien MM5

Manufactured by Société des Études Automobiles M. A. Julien in Paris, France after compelling the government to free up the materials needed, the MM5 and its VUP sibling featured a 325cc 2-stroke single (with arguably one of the most beautiful air-cooled cylinder castings, up there with the BMW 132 and Ariel Square Four quad exhaust example) in the rear and sending 10hp through a 3-speed manual gearbox.

1947 Rovin D-2

The company originally established near Paris to sell motorcycles, founder Raoul Pegulu, Marquis of Rovin championed a small car and began production of the D-2 model (a D-1 prototype never progressing beyond that stage) in 1946 before passing the project to his brother, Robert, due to health concerns--Raoul would die in 1949 and the company continued until 1958. The D-2 was powered by a 10hp 423cc water-cooled boxer twin mounted longitudinally, aft of the axles with the 3-speed manual gearbox ahead of them (not unlike a Beetle).

1947 A.L.C.A. Volpe

Animona Lombarda Cabotaggio Aero's compact Volpe (translates to "Fox") was the most ambitious of this bunch, with a 124cc 2-stroke twin purportedly developed by Gioachino Colombo, presumably during the same time he was designing the first Ferrari V12s, with crankcase compression through external pipes and delivering 6hp to a 4-speed preselector manual gearbox with electromagnetic engagement.

The company would prove to not be what it seemed, however, and preorders in Italy and Spain (as Hispano-Volpe) to the tune of 5.5 million euros today weren't fulfilled, and what cars were rolled out lacked any running gear, let alone the impressive kit presented in pre-production models. Fewer than 10 "rollers" rolled out.

1947 Nardi-Danese 750 Barchetta "Boby"

The first car developed by famed Italian engineer, designer and racer Enrico Nardi with co-pilot Renato Danese.

Named after Nardi's daughter Roberta, the "Boby" car, like subsequent 750 monopostos, made use of a 745cc OHV BMW R75 sidecar bike twin and 4-speed with reverse (a reverse gear being a necessity for sidecars) sitting ahead of the front axle centerline and transverse leafspring, sending 40hp to a live rear axle supported by quarter-elliptic leafsprings.

While quite small, this example doesn't necessarily share the frugal spirit of a true microcar, rather it was intended for competition--and indeed the pair saw early success.

 

[Turbo]

Friday Foursome

Whoa there that's not AUP appropriate... keep your fantasies to yourself.

 

[Populuxe]

I was thinking that Nardi-Danese was quite lovely until I saw it from the front.

The Julien is my favorite of the group, and you are correct, that engine is beautiful.

Speaking of engines, I wondering if the flat-twin powering the Rovin was manufactured by Gnome et Rhône. They made motorcycles powered by flat-twin engines and it's entirely possible they might have sold a small fun of engines to Rovin.

 

[TexRex]

I was thinking that Nardi-Danese was quite lovely until I saw it from the front.

I mean...I get that, but I personally find it attractive and indicative of function being a primary concern. There are images floating around of either that car or a similar example with a wildly different front end that left the cylinders exposed in little coves between the nose and the front fenders, so that may have been either an earlier iteration or an evolution that either needed to be resolved or solved cooling concerns.

The Julien is my favorite of the group, and you are correct, that engine is beautiful.

It's mine as well, and I think the danged thing is beautiful all around.

Speaking of engines, I wondering if the flat-twin powering the Rovin was manufactured by Gnome et Rhône. They made motorcycles powered by flat-twin engines and it's entirely possible they might have sold a small fun of engines to Rovin.

It's possible but not something on which I'd bet. Admittedly, I didn't include a shot of the engine itself outside of the car, but it's just so wildly different:

While there is that motorcycle link between the two companies, Gnome et Rhône certainly wasn't the only manufacturer of flat twins even in France at the time (Panhard and Mathis).

If you know what to look for in the image of the engine in the car, you'll the heads aren't mirrored as the exhaust crosses the top of it diagonally from the rear port on the right to the front port on the left. Intake isn't as apparent due to the presence of the generator, but it follows a similar path. The heads on both sides appear to utilize the same casting. I suspect the engine was designed specifically for use in a car.

Speaking of Mathis:

The company's VL333 three-wheeler with its 700cc twin was intended to help put a war-ravaged France back on the move--sadly it never left the prototype phase.

Edit for spelling.

 

[homeforsummer]

Speaking of Mathis:

View attachment 743951 View attachment 743952

First car that sprung to mind with that picture is the Corbin Sparrow:

I remember reading about them very early on when I started writing about cars, but by that point Corbin itself would already have closed, as they were only made from 1999-2003. It seems that only 300 or so were made, but as a semi-serious attempt at a usable EV before EVs were remotely mainstream, it probably played a relatively big part in a relatively small industry. Range of 20-40 miles, top speed of 70mph.