Another name for microcar is Station Car, where the intended use is to travel from a suburban home to an interurban transit station or Park and Ride lot where the vehicle remains until the operator returns from the commute to and from the workplace. In some locations electric vehicle recharging is provided to encourage the use of electric vehicles. NEVs (Neighborhood Electric Vehicles) may also be used as station cars where the roadway speed limits permit such use. These vehicles are also referred to as Autoette (or Auto-ette) in some vehicle regulations, such as those of the city of Avalon, California on Catalina Island.
Welcome to CWAnswers
CWAnswers is your guide to the sprawling world wide web. The directory aims to provide a useful guide made by users. You can share your knowledge as well - simply sign up and edit your first entry. For questions just contact the team at support - at - cwanswers.com.
Weblinks for Microcar
Top 10 for Microcar
Things about Microcar you find nowhere else.
Select content modules
Another name for microcar is Station Car, where the intended use is to travel from a suburban home to an interurban transit station or Park and Ride lot where the vehicle remains until the operator returns from the commute to and from the workplace. In some locations electric vehicle recharging is provided to encourage the use of electric vehicles. NEVs (Neighborhood Electric Vehicles) may also be used as station cars where the roadway speed limits permit such use. These vehicles are also referred to as Autoette (or Auto-ette) in some vehicle regulations, such as those of the city of Avalon, California on Catalina Island.
There are also a variety of microcar trucks, usually of the "forward control" or van style to provide more cargo room. These might be used for local deliveries on narrow streets where standard small pickup trucks would be inconvenient, and full-sized delivery trucks would be impossible.
History
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 former military aircraft manufacturers such as Messerschmitt and Heinkel were prominent microcar makers. 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, Peel P50 was made.
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 popular in Japan, where again they attract various tax and insurance benefits when compared to other vehicles. These are known as keicars 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 keicars, it is of relatively conventional design.
Reasons for microcars
The economy of operating such a small car (mostly in fuel and tires) has often been helped by three-wheeled microcars or cars with very small engines being treated as motorcycles for tax and insurance purposes (quadricycle).
