Microcars

are both cheap and fuel-efficient. They were developed in the impoverished Europe of the postwar period and attracted the interest of people who couldn't afford “real” automobiles. Their popularity spiked after the Suez Crisis of 1956, when oil prices rose steeply. At present the microcar idea seems to have come to the end of its line, just as motorcycles in the 1950s. What need is there for what is essentially a motorcycle with automobile seating and a roof? Yet both microcars and motorcycles have survived. In the 1970s, when oil prices rose again, new types of microcars started to appear, some of them powered by electric engines.

I like microcars because it corresponds with the idea that an intelligently organized life keeps everything to the minimum. The microcar, squeezed down almost to the size of the human body, becomes a space-suit, an exoskeleton, almost clothes. From the technical standpoint, the cars are easy to make, which explains why they have often been produced by small firms, almost in personal garages. On the other hand, “real” automobiles in the era that we are discussing became ever fancier, always bigger, and their companies grew in the battle for markets, teeming with competitors. This is why microcar design has been a lot more daring and often ahead of its time: there was no marketing department to report to.

The Messerschmitt KR 175, the first microcar, was invented by Fritz Fend, a onetime Luftwaffe engineer. After the war, he turned to designing wheelchairs, first with a hand-operated drive and later with a gasoline engine. The last version—the two-seat Fend 150—became the prototype of the Messerschmitt KR 175. When the Messerschmitt company was banned from producing military aircraft, which had been its main output for several years, it began to produce other things, including Fend’s so-called Kabinenrollers, or cabin-equipped scooters.

Messerschmitt

1953