Russell Hayes - The Big Book of Tiny Cars: A Century of Diminutive Automotive Oddities

THE BIG BOOK OF
TINY CARS

A CENTURY OF
DIMINUTIVE AUTOMOTIVE ODDITIES

RUSSELL HAYES

CONTENTS

Often cute, sometimes smart, and sometimes very odd, tiny cars have whizzed around world cities and have been jammed into dinky parking spaces throughout motoring history.

The Big Book of Tiny Cars is the ultimate collection of microcars, minicars, bubble cars, superminis, Japanese kei cars, and American subcompacts that people have built, sold, and driven all over the globe for more than a century. Microcars now get as much classic car interest as Ferraris. You will find more than one hundred cars here, from the weirdest to the smartest designs. Contrast the two-faced Zndapp Janus and the cheese-shaped Sebring-Vanguard CitiCar with the original Mini and the Smart car.

Supplanting the rickety cyclecars of the early 1900s, we begin with the best-selling diminutive prewar cars such as the Peugeot Bb, Austin Seven, and American Crosley. We then ride the wave of tiny cars in fuel-deprived postwar Europe, such as the cult-classic Messerschmitt and BMW Isetta bubble cars and the tiny, sporty Goggomobil Dart. Not tiny at all, but a small car that shook the world, the Volkswagen Beetle influenced many carmakers. Well also take a look at the 1960s and 1970s American compacts and subcompacts meant to squash it. Also featured are modern takes on tiny car history, such as the reimagined Mini Cooper and the new Fiat 500.

Other manufacturers represent household names, such as Ford, Honda, Mitsubishi, and Renault, while others, such as Crosley and Hanomag, are long gone. I hope youll find it as fun a trip as I have.

Buckle up and beep beep!

Russell Hayes

London, 2021

Notes: In the Tiny Fact Boxes for each car, I have kept to metric measurements for consistency, although before the 1970s, imperial measurements were the norm. Most fuel consumption figures are British miles per gallon, but where appropriate, American miles per gallon is usedand the American gallon is smaller than the imperial, so fewer miles per gallon.

For expressions of engine power, some cars only have horsepower (hp) listed. This is power measured at the wheels after having gone through the gearbox/drivetrain. Where available, I have opted to use brake horsepower (bhp) as it is more common. This is the unit of power measured at the output shaft, free from drivetrain losses. While in the 1950s and 1960s British and American motor magazines quoted bhp, the German metric measure now widely used is PS, for Pferdestrke, or horse-strength. One PS is the equivalent to 0.986 bhp. I have taken the liberty, as motoring magazines do, of equating bhp and PS when the predominant measure of the time was bhp.

NEW BABIES
1900-1939

AT THE DAWN OF MOTORING, THE WORLD OF SELF-PROPELLED TRANSPORT WAS ONE OF CONTRASTS.

Although it was still largely the preserve of the rich, smaller cars for more modest means emerged based on motorized bicycles. A large car for a small price, the 1908 Model T Ford was the game changer, and American cars began their growth spurt. In Britain, the Model Ts 2.8-liter engine meant it attracted a high horsepower tax, and smaller-engined light cars started to displace the popular but crude cyclecar. However, the trike three-wheelers, such as the Morgan, were an idea that stuck for decades of minimal motoring.

OLDSMOBILE CURVED DASH

1901

To start an Oldsmobile, you hand cranked from the side. There was a tiller rather than a steering wheel, and two pedals controlled the throttle and rear wheel brake. It took practice.

TINY FACT BOX	Oldsmobile Curved Dash 1901
DIMENSIONS	Wheelbase 1.7 m; length 2.4 m; width 1.5 m; height 1.4 m; weight (unladen) 390 kg
ENGINE/DRIVE	1,564-cc water-cooled single-cylinder four-stroke; two-speed gearbox, mid-engine, rear-wheel drive
PERFORMANCE	Top speed approx. 32 kph; approx. 40 mpg
PRODUCTION	Approx. 19,000; 19011907, Detroit, Michigan, United States

TINY TRIVIA

In 1903, Lester Whitman and Eugene Hammond drove a standard Oldsmobile Runabout from San Francisco to Portland, Maine, the longest trip ever completed by a car to that date.

The Oldsmobile Runabout looked like a buggy waiting for a horse; the front took the shape of the usual buggy mudguard, hence its better-known name of the Oldsmobile Curved Dash.