Little Tiny Cars Goin' Beep, Beep, Beep

Being a guy, I like cars. Sorry, ladies. It's a guy thing. We like cars. But, here's the thing - I like, shall we say, cars of a different sort. To be specific, I'm crazy about microcars. Never heard of them? Sure you have. The Smart car is a microcar. Or the modern equivalent of one. Unless you've been living in an 8 by 12 plywood shack in  the middle of Alaska for the past 10 years, you've seen one of those. But, I'm not that interested in the modern variations on this theme. The ones I like are those that were built in Europe from the end of WWII until the mid-1960s. These are fascinating specimens of automotive engineering. See, they had a problem in Europe after the war. The economies of the all of the countries of Europe had been devastated. Raw materials - things like steel and rubber - were either scarce or non-existent. Gas was in short supply and very expensive. But they needed to get people moving again, literally and figuratively. The answer was the microcar. Just enough of an automobile to get you where you needed to be and back again, with the minimum of bells and whistles, and the maximum of fuel economy. The epitome of the microcar was probably the FMR Messerschmitt.


FMR Messerschmitt FM200

A 3-wheeled, bubble-topped contraption that could transport a driver and one passenger down the road at the blinding speed of about 45 mph, powered by a noisy, smokey, little 2-stroke engine that got an amazing 86 miles to a gallon of gas! It was tiny, about the size of a modern Bombardier trike, with the seats positioned one behind the other, like on a motorcycle, instead of side-by-side. You entered not through a door, but via a canopy that flipped up. In fact, the thing looked for all the world like someone had ripped the wings off an airplane and drove it down the road. I remember seeing them on the road when I was a little kid in Germany. They were slow, noisy little crop dusters, spewing out clouds of blue smoke in their wake. But I loved them. Still do. Would love to have one. Wouldn't mind owning a BMW Isetta either. The Isetta was another two-seat bubble car powered by a motorcycle engine (using a motorcycle engine meant that you could drive one with a motorcycle license, which saved a few DeutcsheMarks back in the day). What set the Isetta apart from other microcars was the position of the door. The entire front of the car opened up, the steering column swinging out of the way, and you stepped right in and sat right down.


BMW Isetta 300

And just in case someone parked too close to the front of your car, making it impossible to open the door, fear not! All Isettas were equipped with a sun roof. Uh-huh. That's right. If you couldn't get out the door, the hack was to climb out the top. Gotta love ingenuity. Now looking at these cars today, you're first thought might be, "I wouldn't be caught dead in that thing!" But, you have to remember, folks in Europe NEEDED cars. Any kind of cars. And there were a lot of these to choose from. There was the Fuldamobile, the Atlas Baby Car, the Rolux Baby, the Mochet CM125 Grand Luxe, The Berkley Sport, the Voison Biscuter, the Fiat 500 and 600, the Bond MiniCar, the Champion CH2, the Volkswagon Beetle, the MG Midget, the Lloyd LS300 Kombi, the Frisky Family Three, the Scootacar, and the Goggomobile. I mean, c'mon! Ya got a love a car called the Goggomobile! And this is only a small sampling. There were many cars that only sat one person, like the Peel P50, the smallest production car ever produced, and the adorable Brutsch Mopetta. These cars were designed to fill a niche, and they did that job well for two decades, until raw materials came back into abundance and family wealth rose back to normal levels, and the microcars made way for the bigger, faster, more luxurious automobiles that Europe is so well known for today.

A Brutsch Mopetta on the go

But today, with gas prices rising and everyone concerned about being "green", it looks like the microcars might be ready to stage a comeback. The Smart Car I've already mentioned, and the Fiat 500 is back, as is the Mini Cooper, albeit from a new manufacturer, and others are in the works too. Perhaps it won't be too much longer before we see a modern version of the Messerschmitt tearing up the roads again. It's not a bad idea. But I doubt the new ones will have the same charm as their predecessors did.