Mar
31Fine Collection of Micro Cars
Filed Under (Auto, Concepts) by admin on 31-03-2009
Fine Collection of Micro Cars.
Microcars built in Europe immediately after World War I were often motorcycle based and were referred to as cyclecars. These included, but were not limited to, the Amilcar and Bédélia from France and the GN and Morgan from the United Kingdom.
Many microcar designs flourished in post-World War II Europe, particularly in Germany, where prominent microcar makers were former military aircraft manufacturers such as Messerschmitt and Heinkel. The Messerschmitt KR175, KR200 and TG500 even had aircraft-style bubble canopies, giving rise to the term bubble car to refer to all these post-war microcars. Isettas and others also had bubble-like appearance.
In the 1960s, the smallest car ever, the Peel P50 was made.
This Smart car is considered by some as an example of a microcar; with a weight of 730 kg, it is one of the lightest cars in the current European market
France also produced large numbers of similar tiny vehicles called voiturettes, but unlike the German makes, these were rarely sold abroad. Very small cars have also been well loved in Japan, where again they attract various tax and insurance benefits when compared to other vehicles. These are known as kei cars and differ from most of the European microcars in that they are typically designed and built as scaled-down versions of very traditional car configurations, while European microcar designs tend to be unorthodox and sometimes bizarre.
The Smart (model Fortwo) launched in 1998 could be seen as a successful re-invention of the microcar (or at least the city car) principle. Like the Japanese kei cars, it is of relatively conventional design. There is also the Tata Nano car in India that is scheduled to enter production soon.
wikipedia source


























































