Small, clever Germans
Germany doesn’t do small cars by half. It’s always been ambitious with its smallest transport, almost to a fault.
1934 25bhp to the people
Ferdinand Porsche gets to work on Adolf Hitler’s commission for a four-seater, air-cooled Volksauto (people’s car) costing less than DM1000. After the war, Major Ivan Hirst finds the remains of a prototype as allied forces rebuild the factory and jury-rigs a production line. By 1949, VW is a marque in its own right and by 1972 the Beetle overtakes the Ford Model T as the world’s most massively mass-produced car when car number 15,007,034 rolls o the line.
1993 Blue Smartie
SMH, the guys behind Swatch watches, dream of a city car with a tiny footprint and customisable panels. They team up with Daimler-Benz to make the Micro Compact Car (MCC) a reality. The 1997 production Smart is 550mm shorter than a Mini, and its three-layer floorpan helps pass crash tests by pushing the engine away from occupants in a collision.
2002 VW does a lot with a litre
No one instils get-it-done fear in engineers like Ferdinand Piëch, and he lights a fire under VW’s finest to create the most economical road car possible. Initially appearing in 2002 as the teardrop-shaped ‘1-litre car’ prototype (the aim being 100km on one litre of fuel), by 2011 it’s become a plug-in diesel hybrid. Not that little in price at nearly £120k but tiny in fuel consumption: 310mpg. Ducati-engined Sport version doesn’t make production, but looks more fun.
2021 BMW Vision Circular concept
Ten years on from the i3, another big-cabin, small-footprint city car from BMW, this time a pure concept for the IAA motor show (see Tech in this issue). The circular bit of its name is about sustainability: it’s designed to not only cut local emissions but also to consider the overall impact of its production cycle. It’s paint-free, packs no rare earths in the motors and its solid-state batteries are more easily recyclable; as is the car as an entity, created with very few components and designed to be pulled apart easily at the end of its life.
1950s The bubble car boom
The post-war population needs cheap transport with better weather protection than a motorbike but a similarly small appetite for fuel: enter the microcar. Messerschmitt, taking an enforced break from making aircraft following the 1939’45 a air, jumps on the microwagen with the Kabinenroller (meaning ‘scooter with cabin’: Ronseal). Tandem seats, Plexiglas canopy and the lingering scent of two-stroke oil in your outfit.
1997 Audi’s aluminium experiment
Audi whips the covers o its Al2 concept at the ’97 Frankfurt show, an aluminium-spaceframe answer to the incoming threat of Mercedes’ A-Class. In ’99 it becomes the A2 production car, and something of a curate’s egg: spectacular fuel economy thanks to meagre weight and a slippery shape, but a hefty price makes for sluggish sales.
2011 BMW’s carbonated city car
BMW’s first mass-produced EV is the i3, a bold clean-sheet city car with a neat carbonfibre monocoque. Like the Audi A2 it looks great but it’s pricey to build and to buy, and it doesn’t make BMW pots of money. Insiders admit upcoming BMW i models will be less adventurous and won’t use carbonfibre as extensively.
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