I Heart Itty Bitty Cars

The late 50's and early 60's were great years for small cars in Europe and Asia. Fast forward fifty and some years forward, I think there is an echo today of the contrast between Europe/Asia (small and efficient is good, big is for imperialists) versus America (big and inefficient is good, small is for socialists) in their car design philosophies, and by extension, market demand philosophies. Now that America is feeling the pinch of expensive gas, and thinking more and more about smaller more fuel efficient cars to drive, it's like history is repeating itself, sadly enough.

 

Bar none, European and Asian pipsqueak cars from the 50's and 60's are my favorite vehicles and have been for as long as I can remember. I have a growing collection of 1/32 scale cars from that era that I just dusted off since we're starting to pack for our move, and they have to be packed extra carefully since these models are pretty rare. I am no car historian, just an avid enthusiast of automobile design, super-smallness was probably more the exception than the rule(ie, whales like the celebrated American'52 Cadillac above left and similar big "estate saloons" as they called them in Europe), but this unique automobile era did indeed produce the amazingly diminuitive Fiat Cinquecento (pictured above right) and BMW Isetta (the model I am holding above) among others. Don't get me wrong, I do like today's (American-imported) SmartCars and Mini Coopers, but they're totally lacking that je ne sais quoi. (Maybe their respective design statements skew much more toward "style" than "utility"...?)

 

I am posting images of my little Asian car model kits of the 50's and 60's to the world to behold mostly because I'd love to find others in the blogosphere who A) collect these rare model kits too, B) would like to see many more smartly designed and engineered (small) 21st century cars on our roads for perpetuity, C) would offer to sell me a restored one (I am no mechanic) that I can drive around for real, if they happen to have one in their collection they want to unload, and D) would agree that the new "boxy" thing going on with Scion's xB and Honda's Element harkens back pretty directly to little Asian utility trucks from this era.

 

By the way, I won't even listen to arguments about these things being unsafe (I admit this is a bit bullheaded). I ride a 200cc Yamaha TW200 motorcycle. If you're not familiar with the vaunted "tee-dub", check it out - it is the 2-wheeled equivalent of these itty bitty 50's/60's cars amidst today's sea of bloated, oversized, overstyled Harley's and the like. Less is more.

If you've concluded that I have an anti-American sentiment about cars, you'd be partially right. Truth be told, my favorite ride of all time (that I've owned) was my plain white '00 Ford Ranger single cab 4-cylinder stickshift pickup truck. When I was a kid, my parents owned two American Motors vehicles, believe it or not - an electric blue AMC Pacer and an olive green AMC Matador station wagon. I liked those, too, mostly because they were so funny-looking.

 

Comments

[Lindsay]

Hey Gong--I also love microcars! Driving around the Echo Park area of town (or somewhere abouts) I saw someone working on something that resembled the Mazda K360 with tons of people filming it. I don't know what it was for (a movie? a tv show? a documentary?) but the car was pretty amazing. :D