Microcar Panorama Thread

[Barrett]

On the face of it, 1956 was a great year for the minicar. Judging by this poster, the choices offered in the economy car sector were huge and varied. Unfortunately, the reality is less kind. Out of the 28 vehicles shown, at least 5 never made it beyond the prototype stage and one, as far as I can tell, never existed at all. Only a couple of the marques featured made it into the next decade, and most were already in their death throws in 1956, or gone within the next year or two.
It must be said that a few of the cars were a success in their respective countries and, in a couple of instances, for export too. It also must be said that some of the biggest successes were not due to any real superlative qualities (even relatively, within the field of small economy cars), but rather a lack of competition from other makes. That some of these tiny devices sold in the thousands and others in the tens seems more down to luck and circumstance than any inherent quality (or lack thereof) in the cars themselves.
One thing the poster does show is the huge variation of solutions offered to the same essential problem; That of transporting a couple of occupants for the lowest price possible, disregarding most notions of comfort or performance in exchange for absolute economy. With a couple of noble exceptions, none of these cars were conceived as anything other than a temporary solution to a temporary problem, and as such have none of the everyman qualities that make a true 'people's car' great, these were cheap, disposable objects, not the realisation of utopian dreams to mobilise a nation.


The first group of cars I'll be looking at are, despite being built by three different companies in three different nations, all very closely related, all being the brainchildren of one Egon Brütsch. Brütsch was something of a rich playboy, who had ample wealth to spend designing a series of cars that conformed to his own personal vision of what the battered masses of post-war Europe should be using as transport. Brütsch was one of the pioneers of glassfibre technology in Europe, and favoured a method of construction where the bodyshell consisted of two halves, top and bottom, which were joined by a seam. As his designs didn't include doors, roof or bootlid the top piece was one solid section. Most of his cars had externally mounted engines and didn't need a bonnet either.... Most of the cars he designed adhered to this same basic design.
Although Brütsch was an eager and prolific designer, it seems that he never really had any major plans to manufacture cars himself. Instead, his plan was to design and prototype vehicles and then sell licenses to other companies throughout Europe to build cars to those designs. Unfortunately, Brütsch was easily bored and moved quickly from one project to the next, the result was that none of his designs were tested to any real degree and the many companies who purchased licences ended up spending a fortune making the cars safe and production ready.
Brütsch's first major design was called the Spatz (sparrow), a medium-sized three wheeler (in the 'Morgan' configuration rather than the 'Reliant' one) which due to it's width could seat three people in relative comfort. As mentioned above, no provision was made for weather protection, entry was via cut-outs rather than doors and the join between the two body halves was covered by a rubber 'bumper' running the entire circumference of the car, a feature which became something of a trademark of Brütsch designs.



One of the first people to purchase a license for the Spatz was Harald Friedrich, managing director of the snappily named Alzmetall P. Meier & Friedrich GmbH. I can't find any mention of them beyond their involvement with Brütsch so I have no idea what they manufactured, but to manufacture the car Friedrich partnered up with the Victoria Motorcycle company. Victoria was a German institution, having been founded in 1886 as a bicycle manufacturer and thriving as a motorcycle builder from the 1920s. Their factory had been severely damaged during wartime bombing, but production of new motorcycles had begun again in 1948.

By 1955, they were making things like the 'Swing', above, and doing pretty well in the crowded German Motorcycle market. It was logical that they would expand into small car production, like so many other motorcycle firms were doing at the beginning of the 1950s, and the prospect of a ready-made design from Brütsch with financial backing from Friedrich must've seemed very appealing at the time. Unfortunately, the firm soon realised that the Spatz as designed by Brütsch was completely unsuitable for production. The company hired the retired engineer Hans Ledwinka, of Tatra fame, to design a brand new chassis, steering and suspension set-up for the car (Possibly an over the top move, as I'm sure any competent engineer could've done a similarly decent job and cost considerably less. The reasons for choosing the infamous Czech remain obscure), which included the drastic step of turning the 3-wheeled Spatz into a conventional four wheeler. The engine was a rear mounted Victoria 200 or 250cc 'bike engine, which in itself was a highly modified Ilo design.



The bodywork also received a comprehensive restyle with headlights uncovered and moved outboard and more pratical door cut-outs and a higher 'screen, but retaining the rubber ring around its midriff.
Eventually the car was deemed ready for production and Victoria started selling the car as the Spatz. After investing a considerable sum of money in making the car a salable product, they rightly believed the car to be of their own design and refused to pay Brütsch his license fees. Unwisely he took the firm to court, and not only did the judge rule in Victoria's favour, he also declared Brütsch's original design to be 'dangerous'!





Probably due to the complete redesign, the Spatz was probably the most successful Brütsch-related car, with approx. 1500 sold up to 1958. After that, the design was taken over by a company called Burgfalke, and further improved with proper doors and better weather equipment. They planned to sell the car in North America and, apparently, met with moderate success in doing so, although the fact I can't find a single image of a supposed Burgfalke Spatz beyond a brochure shot paints a different picture.



One of the less successful Spatz licenses, and the second Brütsch design featured in the Panorama 1956 poster, was purchased by A. Grünhut & Co.of Wollerau, Switzerland, who bought the license after Brütsch exhibited the Spatz at the 1955 Geneva motor show. At the time there was no Swiss motor industry to speak of, and despite not feeling the effects of WWII as much as the rest of Europe, there was thought to be a need for a small Swiss-built economy car, and obviously Brütsch's promise of a ready-made car was appealing. The firm planned to market the car as a 'Belcar'. Like the German Victoria Spatz, the bodywork received some modifications from the original, with more practical headlights windscreen. The same Victoria 200cc engine was chosen for the Swiss car as it had a precedent for reliability in it's traditional two-wheeled home. Again, the shoddy nature of the original design created major problems and the discovery of serious flaws with the front suspension and steering design delayed production, with cash for the project drying up in 1956, effectively killing the car before it was even born. It's unlikely any of the cars survive today.


The Third Brütsch car featured here is the French Avolette, which is based not on the Spatz but another Brütsch design, the Zwerg (Dwarf). In size terms, this was somewhere in the middle of the Brütsch range, smaller than the Spatz but bigger than the tiny Mopetta. The traditional Brütsch styling traits can clearly be seen, with the distinctive rubber bumper, cut down 'screen and covered headlights it was clearly a close relative of the Spatz. The Zwerg shared that cars general layout too, with a rear mounted engine driving the single rear wheel.


The Avolette was built by a small Paris-based air company, Société Air Tourist, who purchased the license to build the Zwerg in 1955. Like the Spatz, the Zwerg also appears to have been a fundamentally flawed design from the beginning, and SAT were forced to completely redesign the chassis and steering for the Avolette. The body was also slightly changed, gaining a single inboard headlamp and more prominent wheelarches. Unlike Victoria however, SAT were happy to continue to pay the license fees to Brütsch despite having invested considerable time and money bringing the car to production standards.


(early Avolette literature showing the unmodified Zwerg)

SAT had to push ahead with selling the newly productionised Avolette, and spent some time making it more attractive to the French public, who were already spoiled for choice when it came to bottom-rung microcars, by designing a unique hardtop for the car as an option to make it more practical winter transport. The main appeal of the car in France was its ability to be driven without a license, back in the days when the rules for sans permis cars was anything under 125cc (!). The Avolette could be had with a large variety of engines in fact, from the 125 to a 200cc Fichel & Sachs motor that also powered the Messerschmitt.

A 'fully loaded' Avolette complete with hardtop. Chassis and engine options are displayed on the wall



Avolette brochure showing the chassis design and the different variants available. The fourth closed coupe style was never built

At the same time, SAL completely redesigned the exterior of the car and showed a prototype of the new 'Record De Luxe' in 1956, but it is doubtful whether it was ever built. Whilst this was going on, and seemingly unperturbed by having to basically redesign the Avolette from scratch, SAL also took on another license-built Brütsch car, the Rollera, which they equipped with a 100cc Comprema engine and a bespoke folding soft top.



Despite all these efforts, it seems SAL only shifted a small handful of cars in total, and production ended completely in late '57 or early '58. Several of the cars have survived however and, like all Brütsch cars, are now very collectable.

[Barrett]

The next cars I'll be looking at are a brace of stillborn German prototypes that never made production. It's indicative of the optimistic nature of this poster that so many prototypes were displayed amongst the established production cars, and also indicative of how many motoring failures abounded at that time that so few of them made it to production. The two cars are the Kleinschnittger F250 and the DKW ST II.

The Kleinschnittger is probably most interesting of the two, as it came at the tail end of a real down-home style success story. Paul Kleinschnittger had first envisioned his ideal small economy car in the 1930s, and had begun to collect scrap metal and discarded parts to build it with when war broke out in Germany. At the onset of peace, Kleinschnittger began to turn his dream into a reality and his first entirely self built, eponymous car was ready by the end of the '40s.
Although originally he had no plans to build replicas or market the car, he was persuaded by a local salesman that his small economy car was just what impoverished Germany needed, and with the encouragement of a local government authority eager to create jobs for its residents, he set about completely redesigning the car into a marketable product, the Kleinschnittger F125, which was launched in 1950. The rear mounted 98cc Ilo of the first car was replaced with a 125cc unit mounted at the front and driving the front wheels, with a stark roadster body formed from hand beaten aluminium over a tubular frame, the car was cheap but also surprisingly well made.


While today the car's styling looks vaguely comical, it was actually a huge success at the time, with many Kleinschnittgers entered in very public motor sport events, often with surprisingly good results, and a large dealer network around the country, the little car notched up around 2000 sales in 7 years of productions and today is a cult car in Germany, as well loved (and valuable) as a Messerschmitt.
Despite the car's success, after a few years it became clear that there was a market for a more civilised, fully enclosed and more powerful Kleinschnittger, and work began on a series of prototypes planned to replace the F125. These cars all used the larger Ilo 250cc engine which had become an option on later Kleinschnittger roadsters, and had glassfibre bodywork in place of the more costly, labour intensive aluminium skin of the production cars. The first car produced, and the one featured on the panorama poster, was christened the F250-S and followed the Brütsch trend of the two piece bodyshell joined in the middle with rubber strips disguising the join.


Although it used the same basic running gear as the standard car, albeit with the larger engine, it had one fairly radical feature in that it was centrally steered, the driver sitting in the middle of a wide bench seat with room for a passenger on either side. Looking at the photographs of the tiny car, you can't help but wonder what kind of masochist would subject themselves to a three-up journey in the cramped cabin... Looks-wise, the car managed to look even more toylike than the production roadster, with its bug eyes, half covered wheels and claustrophobic cabin area, it looked a little like one of Hans Trippel's amphibious car experiments gone awry.



The other two cars were far more conventional in the looks department, the second being a modernised roadster of rather bland, slab-sided appearance, and the final car an attractive coupe with typically Germanic looks, like a cross between a Stanau and a Porsche 356, but in 1/10th scale. Although these cars were, on the face of it, good enough to compete with the more civilised class of minicars from Glas, Lloyd, Maico etc they were never given a chance to be built as Kleinschnittger was declared bankrupt in 1957.


The more conventional second coupe

The other stillborn German prototype could, at first glance, be directly related to the Kleinschnittger F250 project; The cars both feature an unusual central driving position, both are small streamlined coupes with a 'turret' style roof, the single wipers of both cars echoing the steering wheel's position firmly in the mittel. Even the unusual 'bumper' running around the circumference of the cars are shared, though only the Kleinschnittger's is strictly necessary. Not only do the two cars have a striking resemblance to each other, but both were, in effect, aiming for the same market sector in '50s Germany. The difference being that the relatively small, albeit successful, Kleinschnittger company were looking to move upwards, while the famous DKW brand were looking to move downwards into the potentially lucrative minicar arena.
The history of DKW is far too labyrinthine and convoluted to go into here, but it should be mentioned that at this time they were basically producing one basic car, the front drive/ two stroke 3=6 range, which technologically dated back to before the second world war.
I will freely admit that I know virtually nothing about DKW's ST project, but from studying the evolution of the cars it's clear that it began in the very early '50s as an attempt to produce a true economy car using the tried and tested DKW front-drive system and two-stroke engines. While today post-war DKWs are usually lumped together with other German economy brands, at the time the 3=6 range was a close rival to the VW Beetle or Ford Taunus, and stuck firmly in the middle class, and out of reach of the lowest rung of motorists. It seems logical, then, that they would want to launch a car in the true minicar sector, and looking at the first ST I prototype this was obviously the original aim. By the time the ST II seen here came along, the car had grown in size and become more radical in style.





It's unlikely that the car in this state was ever seriously considered for production. By the time the poster was printed the ST II was already far out of date, the far more conventional ST III seen here was clearly paving the way for what eventually became the F11/F12 series. DKW was wise to hold off on launching a true microcar as by the time the F11 was launched the need for such cars had more or less vanished and the new breed of small, but practical family cars like the NSU Prinz and BMW 700 were the real moneymakers.


So here, then, is an example of a company choosing not to pursue the blind-alley of microcar manufacture and as a result the ST II didn't bankrupt the company and end in disaster like so many other of these cars....

[Barrett]

The next two cars I'll be looking at are linked by the fact that both manufacturers were famous constructors of invalid carriages. From Germany, the Meyra 200 and from England the A.C Petite.
It's usual for classic car journalists and armchair pundits to sneer at the AC Petite and its more famous sibling, the AC Acedes invacar, with an off-hand "yes, really, the same AC that built the Cobra..." but it's not an exaggeration to say that without these ugly little 3 wheelers, AC would probably not have survived long enough to build the famous Ford-engined sports car.
AC's existence dates back to the very start of the 1900s, and indeed its first passenger 'car' (if one can call it that) in 1907 was the tiny, 3-wheeled Sociable. It wasn't until the early 1930s that AC started producing anything that remotely resembled a sporting car, so the Petite was not without precedent.


After the second world war AC were one of several companies awarded a government contract to produce invalid carriages for the scores of wounded veterans returning home, a lucrative venture which allowed them to continue building their own range of 2-litre cars on a fairly limited scale. These cars were decidedly old fashioned, with aluminium over ash frame construction and an engine that dated back to the early 1920s. The 'sports' variant, the Buckland, shared these traits and when compared to the new post-war sports cars from Jaguar and Jowett was incredibly outdated. It's unlikely that AC could have continued building these cars without the crutch of the Invacar contract, along with a variety of other light engineering and construction jobs, to support them.
It was hardly a surprise then that in the early 1950s, like so many other car builders, AC decided to enter the then profitable economy car market, the result was the Petite, launched in 1953, which boasted an all aluminium body, in the AC tradition and a rear mounted Villiers single of 350cc. These Villiers engines were of course quite ubiquitous in Britain's microcars at the time, and also had a proven track record with AC, being the power plant behind their invalid carriages.



General appearance was rather odd, with no wheel cut outs at the rear, instead having removable spats for access, gave the impression the Petite was floating along unsuspended. In fact, the wheels were one of the oddest features of the car, as it first appeared the rear wheels were massive 18 inch items whilst the front was a full 10 inches smaller... This eccentricity disappeared in 1955 when the Mk 2 version was launched, which also boasted for the first time a front bumper(!) and a slightly more powerful engine. Neither Mk 1 or 2 versions included a luggage boot, and only a single wiper on the drivers' side was deemed necessary.


The other car that AC launched in 1953 was of course the Ace, with its John Tojeiro designed light tubular chassis and Bristol engine, it was a radical departure from anything AC had built before and as such was an unknown quality. The Petite was a much safer venture for the firm as it knew demand for very basic transport would far outstrip that for sports cars, and they were right too, with over 2000 Petites sold until 1958, and Ace production, which lasted until 1962, only being a few hundred.
AC continued to build the invalid carriages up until the mid 1970s, with production of the infamous Model 70 beginning in 1967. Both the Petite and Sociable names were briefly reused on a pair of prototypes jointly designed with Reliant and using the Model 70's Steyr-Puch engine, but nothing came of the project. Today only a tiny handful of Petites are known to survive.

The German firm of Meyra had been building rudimentary invalid carriages far longer than AC, the first examples dating to the 1930s. These vehicles closely resembled the British invacars of the immediate post war era, being very basic three wheeled devices with handlebar steering and little in the way of weather protection, being more like a motorised wheelchair with an extra wheel than a car. Over in England, as demand for these conveyances increased they became increasingly more practical and car-like, whilst in Germany Meyra continued to build the same basic design, albeit much modernised, well into the 1950s.


Like the British firms, Meyra were doing great business supplying former soldiers with these devices and in the early '50s they decided to branch out into 'real' car manufacture. Rather than producing a variation of its invalid carriage designed for able bodied drivers, they decided instead to design and build an entirely new small family car. The first design resembled an enlarged Fuldamobil (more on that later), being vaguely teardrop shaped, but instead of conventional side doors it had an Isetta-like single front door. Unlike the Isetta, the Meyra's door only opened on the right-hand (passenger) side, negating the need for the BMW's complicated hinged steering column.


I'm unsure if this 'Meyra 200' was anything more than a prototype or if it actually made limited production, but by 1955 an all-new Meyra 200-1 (or 201) was launched, keeping the old cars asymmetric single door arrangement but with a completely different and much larger body. Allegedly, this was the first German minicar to have plastic coachwork. Power came from a rear mounted Ilo 200cc mounted just ahead of the single driven wheel, and the entire rear section of bodywork detached, giving brilliant access to the drivetrain. The car was a full 4 seater although presumably the rear seats were only really suitable for children. With the front hinged door, huge wheelbase and tapered (dare I say it, almost Tatra-esque) tail, it was hard to mistake the Meyra for anything else on the road.



Although these cars were produced and sold in small numbers, I doubt whether production ever really got off the ground, and with development and construction costs far exceeding what was expected by Meyra, there was no way the cars could turn a profit and production came to a stop in 1956. This was a wise move for the company, as happily they still exist today, building motorised wheelchairs and conveyances decades after most of their microcar building peers have perished.

[Barrett]

The next two cars I'll take a look at are amongst the better known on the poster and easily two of the most successful minicars of the period. Both these cars, the Goggomobil and the Lloyd, were the entry-level brands in much larger automotive 'empires' and a surprising number of parallels exist between them.
The first of these cars to appear on the scene was the Lloyd, the first model of which was shown as early as 1950. The car was the brainchild of Carl Borgward, who was attempting to become Germany's one-man motor industry and alongside Lloyd controlled the Borgward and Goliath brands who produced large family cars and commercial vehicles, respectively.
The earliest Lloyd, the LP300, was quite different from the 1956 model shown here. Due to heavy steel rationing at the time, the bodywork was made from fabric stretched over a wooden (later steel) framework, with no paint applied giving the car had a bizarre and particularly dowdy appearance. The car had a small, front mounted 300cc two stroke engine driving the front wheels.
Being one of Germany's first new post-war cars, the success of the true microcars was yet to arrive and as such the Lloyd was designed as a slightly scaled down 'proper' car, with seating for four, a conventional layout and typically Germanic styling. The car was pitched just slightly below the VW Beetle market and despite it's unusual construction and small powerplant was built to the high standard that all Borgward vehicles became known for.
The car was an instant success, and soon enough station wagon, van and even an odd coupe variant became available.


Gradually, the car's appearance became more conventional as the metal content of the body panels became higher, but it was wasn't until 1954 that an all-steel body was available, on the LP300's replacement, the LP400. As its moniker suggests, this car had an enlarged engine and it's body was considerably more attractive than its predecessor


t's from this car that the 'our' featured car derives, the LP250 designation once again denoting engine size. This miserly model was a home-market special that was supposed to take advantage of a German law regarding sub-250cc cars and driving licenses... I'm unsure exactly what this was, but I believe it was similar to the French sans permis system. The LP250, as an entry level model, was sold as standard without any exterior brightwork or even a rear seat, though these were available as optional extras. The cars were not a success and were only produced from 1956-57, making them one of the rarest Lloyd variants.


As Borgward was enjoying the success of his range of small cars, another marque sprung up whose own vehicles had a strikingly similar M.O to the Lloyd, and would go on to be an almost equal sales success.
Hans Glas GMBH of Bavaria had, since 1951, been producing a hugely successful range of small Ilo engined scooters named Goggomobils, and like so many other scooter/ motorcycle companies at the time, decided to go into business building cars. Unlike most other firms, however, Glas considered the typical German economy car to be seriously lacking as practical transport and, perhaps spurned on by the success of the Lloyds, settled on a scaled-down 'normal' car that could comfortably transport a family of 4 and their luggage.
The first car, launched in 1955, while possibly inspired by other small cars of the time, was completely unique. The power came not from one of Germany's many proprietary 'bike engine builders, but an all new 250cc two stroke twin designed by Felix Dozekal, who had previously been engine designer for the Adler motorcycle firm. The engine was rear-mounted, and the car given all-independent suspension, which was unusual in any car of the time and possibly unique in a minicar. The bodywork had a vague resemblance to other German micros, including the Lloyd, with a high roofline and minimal overhang. It was small, but as intentioned could happily seat 4 and instantly found favour in the car hungry sub-Beetle market.




In 1957, the Goggomobil's engine range was expanded with 300 and 400cc versions becoming available. A small but very pretty coupe version was also released at this time, joining the saloon and a tiny panel van that had been launched the previous year.
This range of bodystyles and the increased engine options quickly made Goggomobils one of the best selling small cars in Germany, with cars being exported to other European countries and even the UK for several years. The description of the car as a Goggomobil 'Isard' on the Panorama poster was initially confusing, being familiar with the later Goggmobil/ Glas 'Isar' saloons, until I found this French clipping which helpfully lets us know that "...The car is sold outside of Germany under the name 'Isard'" - However in England it was actually known as the 'Regent' in an attempt to sound more British...


Both these small cars were huge successes for their respective parent companies, at home and abroad. As the years went by they were gradually updated and improved, both cars spawning larger vehicles as the economy improved and the demand for true economy cars diminished, Borgward introducing the Arabella in 1959 and Goggomobil the Isar in 1964. Neither of these cars would replicate the success of their smaller brothers, the entire Borgward empire folding in 1961, and Glas being bought out by BMW in the mid '60s and eventually ceasing production of its own cars in 1969. In this time, some 300,000 Lloyds of all types had been built, closely followed by 280,000 Goggomobils. Astonishing numbers that far surpass any of the other mini cars of the time. Not only did both cars enjoy considerable export success, but bizarrely both were license-built in Australia, the Lloyd was built by Laurence Hartnett, who had been trying to give the Australian public a 'people's car' for years, having previously been involved in an abortive attempt to build a variation of the Gregoire AFG concept that eventually became the Panhard Dyna (and was equally abortively built as the Kendall in the UK) under his own name. His contract with Lloyd provided much more fruitful and over 3000 were built in Australia.
Goggomobils were famously built by Bill Buckle, previously of eponymous GRP sports car fame, who built glassfibre bodied saloons and coupes and designed his own 'Dart' sports car around the standard mechanics, and also a small panel van of quite different appearance to the German equivalent. Buckle, too, had moderate success with these cars, especially the Dart which is now perhaps the most collectable of all the Goggos. (Buckle, Hartnett and the AFG story are all deserving of their own threads, if not their own books, so I won't go into detail here)

Much has been written about Glas and Borgward beyond their interest in the minicar market, I'd suggest this 'brief history' of Borgward for further reading, as I've only just skimmed the surface here.

[Barrett]

The Czechoslovakian aircraft manufacturers Avia were amongst the pioneering Eastern European airplane companies, having existed since 1919. Following the second world war, the company began to diversify into truck manufacture and began building Skoda-designed trucks at the end of the 1940s. In the mid-1950s, inspired by the success of European minicars such as the Goggomobil and Lloyd, the Czech government initiated a scheme to design and productionise a new all-Czech small car. The project was to be completed by two companies; Avia and the smaller firm of Moravan, who were also an airplane builder but unlike Avia had no experience with road vehicles. I assume that the highly skilled workforce used to hand crafting aluminium aircraft, and teams of engineers expert in weight saving and aerodynamics were what encouraged the government to choose aircraft manufactures to create these cars.
The two cars have a broadly similar specification; Both are three seaters, with a central driving position and two passenger seats placed behind the driver; Both eschew standard opening doors in favour of an odd sliding canopy; Both feature a rear mounted Jawa 350cc engine* driving the rear wheels (though in the case of the Avia, it was considerably re-engineered and only used some Jawa parts). From these similarities I think it is safe to assume that the specification was decided on before the two companies began work on the cars, and that they were forced to adhere to these basic design 'rules'.

Moravan (left) and Avia (right) 350 prototypes as first revealed

Both firms unveiled their respective prototypes in 1956, and for whatever reasons the Avia seems to have found favour with the government, as this car was featured in the press both at home and abroad. The propaganda machine happily leaked details of the new Czech peoples car around the world, hence its inclusion in the Panorama poster. Clearly the translation work was not the best, as it describes the car as a Jawa 350. Other than the ancestry of the car's engine, there is no connection to Jawa that I know of. This doesn't seem to be a unique problem, as an American feature on the car from the same period describes it as an 'Avis'!
The two cars looked decidedly odd, with the tall glasshouses and lack of doors giving them a toy-like look. The Avia was the more conventional and 'car like' of the two, but only just.

First Avia 350 in front of an Avia-engined airplane

This was more or less the end of the Moravan car, a further 2 or 3 prototypes were built but it was never mentioned in the press again and the focus seems to have shifted entirely onto the Avia. Development continued on these cars for the next few years, around 10-15 of varying designs having been completed up to 1959, when the project seems to have come to a halt. These cars were significantly restyled from the prototype and looked much more conventional, with a lower roofline and increased dimensions all round. From some angles it could almost be mistaken for an NSU Prinz, but the sliding roof and centre driving position kept the Avia firmly in 'weird' territory.


Later Avia prototypes showing differences with the first car, and the novel removable roof section

The unusual sliding roof could be completely removed turning the car into a sort of Czechoslovakian Fiat Jolly. If it had been put into production the car would most likely have been a huge success in the captive market of Czechoslovakia. The only other homegrown minicar was the infamous Velorex, also powered by a Jawa 350 engine, but considerably cruder than the Avia. There was a long waiting list for the Velorex, which goes to show how desperate people were for transport in post-war Eastern Europe. No doubt the Avia would've been a fierce competitor, if only for its waterproof passenger compartment....
Today there are two known survivors from the run of Avia prototypes, and one of the Moravan cars is also still with us.


*A note on Jawa
The Jawa Motorcycle company was one of the largest in Czechoslovakia and still makes 'bikes today. The Jawa 350 motorcycle was hugely successful, and its engine was the most popular powerplant for nearly all homemade Czech small cars (All Communist states in Eastern Europe encouraged the construction of cars by private engineers, often celebrating the results in annual parades and awarding prizes to the best finished cars. Information on these vehicles is very scarce in the West, but the wonderful All Car Index has the most complete list available). The company were also active in car manufacture, building the Jawa Minor in the '30s which evolved into the lovely little Aero Minor after the war. At the time as the Avia/Moravan project was underway, Jawa were also involved in designing their own microcar prototype. Unlike the 'official' state funded projects which took inspiration from the more conventional German minicars, the Jawa Motorex was clearly influenced by the BMW 600, complete with single front door. A handful of these cars were built for evaluation purposes but never progressed beyond the prototype stage. It's possible the Czech government put an end to the project so as not to have a competitor to its own officially sanctioned designs.

Meanwhile over in Germany, another aircraft company, Dornier were also looking to move into the car market. All aircraft manufacturers in post-war Germany were banned from building 'planes, which precipitated the birth of the Messerschmidt and Heinkel cars. Like these firms, Dornier felt the small car market was the perfect way to diversify, founder Claudius Dornier himself designing a small city car of very unusual appearance. The car was a four seater with a single, top hinged door at the front and rear, the rear seats facing backwards. The engine, an Ilo unit, was mounted centrally between the seats and drove the rear wheels. Vestigial fins on the roof added to the bizarre look of the car, which when viewed from the side was virtually symmetrical. The car was christened the Delta, and was first shown publicly in 1954.





Around this time, the motorcycle firm Zundapp were trying to break into the burgeoning microcar market and had begun looking for an already completed design that they could license build using their own engines. Zundapp were one of many German 'bike makers who had come out of the war fairly unscathed and had begun to diversify into moped/ scooter manufacture, and were looking to expand further into the four-wheeled marketplace. They had already been involved with car design in the 1930s, being the first firm to work with Porsche on a design for a 'people's car' that eventually morphed into the Volkswagen. After considering some other choices, including a license from Egon Brutsch, they approached Dornier with a view to building the Delta, with the caveat that the design of the car could be altered in any way to productionise it. The Delta only existed as a single prototype at this stage, and Dornier happily took up Zundapp's offer and sold all rights to the car to that firm.
A further two years elapsed before the car was ready for production by Zundapp, and the finished product only bore a slight resemblance to the original concept. The general layout was the same, but the hatch doors of the Delta had given way to more practical side hinged items a la Heinkel, and the tiny Ilo engine was ditched in favour of an all new Zundapp unit of 245cc. It's location between the two sets of seats remained the same, and despite a completely revised body, so did the unfortunate 'push-me-pull-you' look of the earlier car. This unusual style did give the new car its name, however, and the new Zundapp Janus, named after the Roman god with two faces, was launched in 1956.

Prototype Janus with sliding windows, replaced by quarterlights on production versions

Cutaway of the Janus showing its unusual engine location and layout

It wasn't until 1957 that production got underway, and almost immediately the car's shortcomings became apparent. Despite the increase in engine size, the car was too heavy for the powerplant and was severely underpowered. Despite its odd looks, as a full four seater it was meant to compete in the BMW 600/ Goggomobil/ Lloyd sector but it it was outperformed by many smaller, cruder devices. The position of the engine also caused difficulties, with varying weight distribution as the number of passengers changed and a high centre of gravity coupled to the all independent suspension resulted in 'interesting' handling characteristics. Work began in earnest on new even larger engines to make the car competitive but sales were slow and it didn't make financial sense to continue to develop the car. In 1958 the car was canned after nearly 7000 had been built.



Around the same time as the Janus was being readied for production, Zundapp were working on another car project of quite different specifications. Instead of being a cheap and cheerful people's car, this was to be a small sports car, and as Zundapp didn't have a suitable in-house powerplant, they chose the British Coventry Climax motor. For the bodywork they also looked to an outside source, and had Pininfarina design a delicate 2 seater coupe that was quite lovely to look at and about as far removed from the Janus as you could get. Unsurprisingly, the single prototype was as far as the project went, and tragically this car doesn't survive today. I'll leave you to mull over what a brilliant and desirable machine this could've been....



Despite the Janus' relative obscurity, today it is one of the best known microcars, its bizarre layout and unforgettable looks symbolizing what makes this type of car so interesting for collectors and motoring historians today. The low production numbers also make it very rare, consequently a Janus is one of the most collectable, and therefore expensive, microcars to buy, and is firmly in the upper echelons of iconic microcars alongside Messerschmidt Tigers and Peel P50s.

[Barrett]

Now a look at a couple of the lesser known French micros starting with the Vallée, or to give it its proper name, the Paul Vallée Chantecler. Vallée, like Egon Brütsch, was an ex-racing driver who founded his own company in the late '40s to build motor scooters. These met with moderate success, and in the early 1950s Vallée introduced a range of small three wheeled light delivery trucks based on the scooters, which featured a very basic cargo box on the front and no rear bodywork, a type of vehicle that was fairly popular at the time throughout Europe.



When Vallée ventured into car production it was logical to use the basic chassis of the delivery trucks as the basis for his passenger cars. The first car appeared in 1952 and was a small, streamlined monoposto that looked more suitable for competition use than as a road car, with aero 'screen and central driving position. The sporty bodywork certainly disguised the rather utilitarian underpinnings quite well, conjuring images of the sporting pre-war Morgans that shared the same layout. This car remained a one-off and it's unlikely P.V had any plans to produce such an impractical vehicle anyway.


Another three years passed before Vallée introduced a real production car, and the revised model, christened the Chantecler, was revealed in 1955. It featured a bulbous glassfibre body with a single headlamp that bore a passing resemblance to the Avolette, though the Vallée was far more ungainly. Motive power came from an Ydral twin of either 125 or 175cc. Coincidentally, it was almost identical to another new French microcar launched at exactly the same time, also built by an eponymous scooter maker; The P.B (for Pierre Brissonet) was strikingly similar to the Vallée in concept and design, but there was no connection between the two cars and their similarity and date of appearance appears to be a complete fluke.


The production Vallée Chantecler was further improved from this design, gaining a new windscreen frame, conventional twin headlights and most importantly a folding canvas hood. Interestingly, the P.B also gained these modifications for production versions, the two cars looking virtually indistinguishable from one another. For whatever reason, the Vallée proved to be the more successful of the two cars, although it hardly sold in large numbers, production trickled along until 1958, when the whole Vallée firm was wound up following the death of Monsieur Vallée in 1957. Several of these cars survive today in the hands of collectors.



The Galy Vibel Coupe is one of the most elusive of the cars featured on the Panorama poster. Here is everything I know about the car: It first appeared in 1954 and was built, presumably in very small numbers, until 1957/58. The engine was either the popular Ydral 175 or an AMC 250cc unit. Ateliers de Mécanique du Centre were one of the lesser known French motorcycle engine producers and as far as I know this was one of the only times their engines were used in a four wheeled vehicle. The Panorama poster mentions that there had been some difficulty in getting the car into production so presumably 1956 was the first year it was actually offered for sale. It seems Galy also offered a tiny Jeep-like utility car, presumably on the samerunning gear, called the Vistard.


The Galy as it first appeared in 1954, without grille and looking rather dumpy

The Galy was a small 3 seater coupe that was stylistically similar to the Astra-based Gill Getabout coupe from England, although the French car was rather better proportioned. The first model appears to do without a grille opening, giving it a utilitarian look, (and suggesting a rear-engined/rear-drive layout) but later cars were much improved with a grille and two-tone paint to liven things up a little. At some point the car gained suicide doors.
Sadly, I can't find any evidence that a single example of the Galy Coupe has survived into the 21st century.

[Barrett]

When looking at the myriad of small cars available throughout Europe in the 1950s it is possible to determine a vague national archetype for the main micro producing nations; The German cars tended to be the least 'car like' in appearance with the Messerschmidts, Heinkels, Fuldamobils and Zundapps hardly resembling regular cars at all and giving rise to the term 'bubble car'. Their unusual looks often a by-product of their parent companies previous experience in the aircraft field; In France the most popular micros were basic, crude machines even compared to their peers; Utilitarian and faintly agricultural in nature with tiny (usually 125cc) engines born out of France's crippled post-war economy and the unique sans permis laws; In Britain, the early minicars were much more easily recognisable as cars, generally conforming to the three wheeled, front engined, aluminium bodied small roadster with a pram type hood and sidescreens, like a cross between a pre-war sportscar and a sidecar. The originator of this style - later seen on the Gordon (more on that later), the first Reliant Regals and, basically reversed, the Powerdrive/ Coronet - was the Bond Minicar.
Lawrence 'Lawrie' Bond had been running his own small engineering works since 1944, and his first foray into automotive design was a tiny single seater for the Formula 500 series in 1947. This was before the Coopers and such had begun to dominate the sport, which was still in its infancy, and all manner of odd machines were being built to compete. Bond's car, nicknamed the 'Doodlebug' was particularly bizarre to look at, like some wildly mutated child's pedal car. The following year he unveiled the more conventional Type-C, which you can read about here.
At the same time he was working on his race car designs, Bond was also designing a small three wheeled no frills economy car for the car hungry British motorist. Being very much a 'one man band' type operation, but feeling his design was good enough to be properly productionised, he approached the Preston firm of Sharps Commercials Ltd (according to Wikipedia, they existed solely to rebuilt military vehicles for the government) and an agreement was reached that they would produce the new car. Launched in 1949, the Bond Minicar was the first of the British economy cars and proved instantly popular, existing at that time in a niche with little competition.



The car was built entirely from aluminium, a practice Bond was familiar with from his days as an aviation engineer before the war, and was powered by a tiny Villiers 122cc engine driving the single front wheel. Unlike the later Reliants whose layout placed the engine behind the front wheel, severely encroaching on the passenger compartment, the Bond mounted the motor just ahead of the wheel, the whole lot being suspended by coil spring and forming one homogenous unit. The positioning doubtless made the car less stable than the Reliant, but with a claimed 5bhp from the motor it probably wasn't that much of an issue. To look at, the car was broadly conventional with the traditional British folding hood arrangement and separate rear wings. The front end, with its single wheel, naturally didn't need wings but a trim line roughly marked out where these would be positioned if the car were in possession of a full compliment of wheels, no doubt to appease the more traditional buyer....
Over the following years, the Minicar was continuously upgraded and improved, gaining a new modernised body in 1952 including 'dummy' wings and a more conventional grille opening. In 1956, the car had become the Minicar Mark D with a firebreathing 197cc Villiers engine, and it is this car shown on the Panorama poster.




The Minicar continued to evolve, the model range expanded to include saloon, estate and panel van variations and gradually becoming more and more conventional in looks, it was built until 1966, having outlasted its numerous rivals by almost a decade. By this point it was far outclassed by the Reliant Regal 3/25, and Bond finally replaced it with the Imp-engined 875, before the entire firm was bought out by Reliant in 1970. An astonishing 25,000+ Minicars of all types were built and many still survive today.

Lawrie Bond was something of a renaissance man when it came to small cars, Lancashire's answer to Egon Brutsch if you like. As well as the Minicar, he was responsible for the design of the Opperman Unicar, and the first Bond Equipe sportscar and the 875, and a range of scooters and motorcycles also sold under the Bond name, but perhaps most famously he was also responsible for the Berkeley.
This car was a join venture between Bond and the Berkeley Caravan co. of Biggleswade, who possessed a skilled workforce adept at glassfibre manufacture and were flushed with the success of the booming caravan market. The first Berkeley car, the SA322, was launched in 1956 and unsurprisingly used the ever-popular Anzani 322cc engine (soon upgraded to the 328 unit), mounted transversely and driving the front wheels. Other unusual feature were the all independent suspension and an entirely GRP construction, the body being made up of three bonded sections with no chassis unit (arguably making it the first British GRP monocoque). All this was wrapped up in a delightfully simple, attractive roadster body that was incredibly well proportioned for its size. It was clear that the Berkeley was not your typical austerity car. Indeed, unlike most other small cars of the time it was designed with the amateur sportsman in mind, rather than as a grim but semi-practical family car, despite (initially) sharing the rather small powerplants of its more economy-minded peers, it was intended to function as both a fun road car and a clubman racer.



These cars were built until 1958, when they were replaced by updated Excelsior 492cc powered versions, and in 1959 an even more powerful four stroke, Royal Enfield engined car joined the range, along with a three wheeled version of the 328, called the T60. All Berkeley cars were successful, but the T60 particularly so, with the tax and license advantages of a three wheeler but (supposedly) retaining the four wheeled Berkeley's excellent handling and lively performance, it is no surprise that the car is often favourably compared to the pre-war Morgan sporting three wheelers. Berkeley also offered a range of 2+2 coupes and convertibles and experimented with larger more practical cars but these were never as popular as the sports models.



The cars were a huge export success too, with many being sold in America, where they were forced to adopt the 'bug eye' headlamp arrangement seen above. In total, Berkeley built over 4000 cars between 1956 and 1960, when the company went bankrupt and ended production of all cars and caravans. Their last model was the Bandit, a move towards the larger sportscar market and an attempt to face up to the competition of the larger, more conventional budget soft tops like the Austin-Healey Sprite. It was powered by a Ford Anglia 997cc engine and the whole thing was designed by famed chassis engineer John Tojiero (of AC Ace fame) and clothed in an attractive, if slightly bland, GRP body. Sadly, only a couple of prototypes were completed before the company folded, one of which survives today.



The popularity of these cars means a lot has been written about them over the years so this is very much a brief history. A good overview of Lawrie Bond's life and work can be found on this very 'local' website

One car that certainly hasn't been mentioned too often is the Gordon, a car which nicely demonstrates the British 'type' of minicar pioneered by the Bond. The Gordon was born from what must be the perfect microcar producing union, between a motorcycle designer and an invalid carriage builder. The motorcycle side was well respected Sunbeam designer Erwin Poppe who, like so many others at the time, dreamed of a cheap, basic car to get Britain moving again after WWII. The invalid carriage builders were Vernon Industries Ltd. who were one of the firms awarded a government Invacar contract in the early 1950s. Their car was fairly demonstrative of the Invacars before the government-ordered standardisation, a fragile looking device with a single headlight and a side mounted engine driving a single rear wheel. Vernon Industries were (are?) of course the very same people behind the football pools, which is always brought up in a faintly mocking way whenever the Gordon is mentioned, however the fact that the firm had ample experience building cheap three wheeled cars is usually overlooked. This is not to say that the Gordon doesn't deserve to be mocked, of course, because it does.


Vernon Invacar, 1953

The Gordon roadster was launched in 1954 as a four seater family car, and when viewed from the nearside appeared to be a relatively conventional car in the Regal/ Minicar mould. At the front, a pair or oversized headlamps and a downturned dummy grille gave the car a faintly pathetic look, like a sick puppy begging to be put out of its misery. The body was aluminium and steel and power came from a 197cc Villiers engine. The engine was perhaps the Gordon's most unusual, certainly most infamous, feature, being mounted just to the right of the driver and contained in a bizarre carbuncle attached to the side of the body like some sort of mechanical wart. I've not been able to ascertain exactly why this was.... The layout of the single seater, hand controlled invacar seems to have been taken more or less unchanged and turned into the new Gordon. The engine drove a single rear wheel, via chain and its position meant no door on the driver's side. Looking at the incredibly fragile chassis, one can only wonder how incredibly unstable this set up must've been with a single occupant driving solo and all the weight on one side....




The main, if not only, selling point was the price: At under £279 the Gordon was the cheapest new car on the market by some margin. This sole fact can account for the fact that Vernon sold enough Gordons to stay in production until 1958. How many were actually sold I don't know, but only a couple are known to survive today. This was British misery motoring at its worst/best, it's hard to think of a single redeeming feature of this car, which of course makes it so much more interesting than any of the half-good micros of the same period. To replace the lack of interesting information about this little horror, I hope a few more photos will suffice.

[Barrett]

As possibly the most recognizable and iconic microcar, so much has been written about the Isetta that I will only attempt a very brief historical overview of the cars.
The story begins in post-war Italy, when young Renzo Rivolta took over as head of his family's company Isothermos, a successful manufacturer of domestic refrigerators. He decided to branch out and begin the manufacture of motorcycles, the first of which were launched in 1948. These 'Isomotos' ranged from tiny Vespa-style scooters to large 500cc 'bikes and were moderately successful. The company also branched out into producing motorcycled-based small three wheeled delivery trucks, initially incredibly simple devices with the front end of a motorcycle and a flat load area behind the seat, evetually becoming fully enclosed small trucks and vans not dissimilar to the Piaggio Ape. They also offered a more conventional four wheeled light van. This range of 'Isocarro' vehicles were license-built in Spain for many years.
In the early 1950s Rivolta began work on a small car project that eventually became the Isetta ('little Iso') and was launched in 1953. It used Iso's own 236cc single cylinder two-stroke engine as used in the company's motorcycles, driving the rear wheels. The body was a particularly distinctive ovoid shape with a large single front door and wraparound rear screen. The minimal 'dashboard' was fixed to the door, and the steering wheel was connected to an ingenious pivoting column which swung out with the door.


Sales were slow, and production of the Iso Isetta only continued until 1956, but in this time Rivolta had managed to sell several licenses to companies interested in building the car outside of Italy. One of the first licenses sold, as early as 1953, was purchased by the French firm VELAM (Véhicular léger à Moteur). Although they acquired the rights to the design, they didn't purchase any tooling to build the car and had to design their own interpretation of the Isetta from scratch. The result, whilst superficially similar to the Iso, was even more egg-like than the Italian car. The car used the same Iso engine as the original, but the suspension system was changed to a Neimann 'rubber band' type as used in several other French minicars of the period.



In addition to building the standard car, Velam also offered a range of different variations, including a decapotable version with a folding hood in place of the rear window (this si the car that appears in the Panorama poster), a 'luxury' version called the Ecrin, and a cut-down 'Sport' version, the front door of which was fixed, with entry via canvass sidescreens. These more expensive alternatives were not hugely successful, and the bulk of Velam's production was the standard Isetta, several thousand of which were produced between 1955 and 1958.

Another of the Isetta licenses was purchased by BMW, and the resulting German-built car is probably the most famous of all the microcars. BMW were in pretty dire financial straights when they began building the Isetta in 1955, their entire car range consisted of just one model, the huge, expensive and unpopular 501 (and it's even pricier V8 502 sibling), the likes of which were wholly unsuitable for Germany's post-war economic climate. The firm looked to be heading towards liquidation before the Isetta license was bought. Like Velam, the car was considerably changed from its Italian prototype, although the body style was more or less identical barring some detail differences. The engine was changed to BMWs own 250cc motorcycle unit, thousands of which were already doing service across Germany.


The car was an instant success from the start, 10,000 were built in the first production year alone, after which the car was given a mild restyle, with sliding windows, and an enlarged 300cc engine. It was this improved version that was built under license in Brighton, minus a wheel.


Like Velam, BMW built a range of different bodystyles including a convertible and even a tiny pick-up truck, which rivals the Austin A35 pick-up as the most useless load-lugger ever built. All in all, over 150,000 BMW Isettas of all types were built up to 1962. The success of the car gave BMW the capital it desperately needed to develop the 700 (really just a 'car shaped' version of the 600, which was in turn just a 'big Isetta'), and eventually the Neue Klasse range which put BMW firmly back on the map as a producer of quality cars.

Like all nations involved in WWII, Germany had a huge number of Invalided ex-soldiers who were struggling with mobility, the conventional wheelchair design often impractical for their needs. Like the Invacar scheme in the UK, several firms began the manufacture of conveyances in the immediate post-war era. One of these was the Meyra firm, as we have already seen, and another was designed and built by the aircraft engineer Fritz Fend. His first vehicles were un-motorised three wheeled contraptions with bicycle wheels and minimal bodywork, but soon he offered a version with a small 98cc Fitchel & Sachs engine driving the rear wheel. Over the years his design was gradually improved with smaller wheels, better weather protection and even a fully enclosed version, eventually becoming the familiar Fend 'Flitzer' in the early 1950s.



Struck by the number of sales to non-invalids who merely needed an incredibly cheap and economical car, Fend saw the potential for a more practical new Flitzer and set about redesigning the car for civilian use. He approached the Messerschmitt aircraft company and a deal was struck to use the Messerschmitt name and produce the cars in their factories, which were lying idle due to the restrictions on aircraft manufacture in Germany that was also responsible for the Dornier Delta and Heinkel microcars. Willy Messerschmitt himself did not take the cars too seriously, nor did he have any input in the design despite the car's aeronautical appearance, although he did begin work on an abortive radial-engined saloon car that never got past the initial prototype stage.
The first Messerschmitt car, the KR175, was launched in 1953 and instantly proved a success, despite its bizarre looks and impractical nature. The body was like a cigar-shaped UFO with enclosed front wheels and a glass dome for a roof, which tilted up along the length of the car for entry. The car's narrow track necessitated tandem seating, strictly for two, and the whole thing was much more like an enclosed motorcycle than a car; Indeed, the name of the car - Kabinenroller - literally means 'cabin scooter'. The '175' part referred to the power plant, which was a Fitchel & Sachs unit of 173cc mounted just ahead of the single rear wheel. Steering was via a set of handlebars, an obvious carry-over from the invalid cars.



The KR175 proved Fend right when he saw a market for a tiny economy car, approx. 15,000 being sold up to 1955 when it was replaced by the improved KR200 range. The most obvious external difference was the more integrated front 'screen and reshaped wings giving better access to the wheels. The engine was enlarged to 200cc and a drophead version was made available in 1957. These cars, although still known as Messerschmitts, were now wholly produced by Fend and his new company Fahrzeug- und Maschinenbau GmbH, Regensburg (FMR), formed after Messerschmitt were once more allowed to manufacture aircraft in 1956. FMR developed the four wheeled 500cc TG500 'Tiger' which proved popular with clubman racers though was barely more car-like than the KR200 and looked even odder, with its tacked-on rear subframe. Production of the KR200 continued until 1964, some 40,000 having been built. Today, the Isettas and Messerschmitts are the most popular (and valuable) of all the microcars, their unique looks and high number of survivors make them instantly recognisable to any car enthusiast.



Photos of the BMW Isettas nicked from this great blog

[Barrett]

Following the familiar pattern of many of its contemporaries, the Heinkel Kabine was the product of an aviation firm forced to seek alternative means of income during the Allied restrictions on aircraft manufacture. Like Willy Messerschmitt, Ernst Heinkel was a pioneer of German aviation who built his first 'plane in 1911, and by 1922 had formed his own company, Heinkel-Flugzeugwerke, to produce aircraft which it did until the end of the second world war.
Heinkel's first foray into non-airborne transport was a motor scooter, which was developed from the late 1940s and was eventually launched in 1953. The Heinkel Tourist, as it was known, was a fairly unique design, being somewhere between a scooter and a full sized motorcycle. The engine was a four stroke, single cylinder unit of 149cc - later enlarged to 175cc - and the vehicle was marketed as a sort of 'luxury' motorbike, with the weather protection and comfort of a scooter but the performance of a 'bike. The Tourist was a huge success and was built, in gradually improved form, for over a decade.


After a couple of years of Tourist production, Heinkel began to expand into the emerging microcar market. The Isetta had proven to be a huge success for BMW on its launch in 1955 and Heinkel decided he could do even better with an improved version following the same basic design principles but built according to aircraft practice to make it lighter and stronger. The car was built around the Heinkel 175cc engine from the Tourist, the basic shape was incredibly similar to the Isetta but the car was longer, allowing a small rear seat area for children. The entire tail of the car hinged upwards giving excellent access to the engine (unlike the BMW). Launched in 1956, the Heinkel Kabine was strikingly similar in appearance to the early '3 window' Isettas, with the size increase making it look somewhat stretched and slug-like. Every Heinkel had a roll-back canvas roof, in accordance with the German desire for a cabriolimousine bodystyle on even the smallest cars. Inside, as the novel pivoting steering column on the rival car was patented by Iso the Heinkel made do with a rather clumsy fixed column that somewhat impeded ingress and egress.



Despite the smaller engine, the Heinkel could easily match the Isetta in performance and economy stakes, and the bonus of rear seats combined with a surprisingly high build quality should've put it above the BMW in the sales charts but car never matched the success of either the rival bubble or its two-wheeled brethren, despite an increase in capacity to 200cc, the option of three or four wheels and Heinkel's reputation for high quality. Unsurprisingly, the high development and manufacturing costs resulted in each Kabine making a loss for Heinkel and the car was produced for a mere 2 full years to 1958, when production halted after the sudden death of Ernst Heinkel. Around 11,000 had been built making it a moderate success, but nowhere near the huge numbers of Isettas sold by BMW.




When production of the Kabine stopped in 1958 Heinkel continued to make the incredibly profitable scooters, and in an attempt to recoup some of the losses incurred by the Kabine they sold the rights to the car to two foreign companies, the first in Argentina to Los Cedros S.A, a company that had begun in the late 1940s building locally assembled Packards and Studebakers. The Heinkels were incredibly popular with around 2000 being built, production only coming to a halt when supplies of the Heinkel engines dried up. The motor industry in Argentina at that time consisted mainly of license-built European cars and the year after Heinkel production ended Los Cedros merged with the Argentine Glas licensees and continued to build Isards and 1204s until 1965.
The second license was initially sold to the Irish Dundalk Engineering Company but was withdrawn when it became apparent that the quality control at the dirt-floored factory was incredibly poor. Information on the Irish-built cars is sketchy but it is thought that more than 5,000 were built up to 1961, when all rights to the car and the complete Irish production line was transferred to England, to Trojan Cars. Trojan were among the pioneers of miserable motoring in Britain, having built their infamous PB light car throughout the 1920s. Car production at Trojan had ended in the mid-'30s after the stillborn Mastra project and by the late 1950s the firm was only known for its Perkins-powered delivery vans and trucks, a long standing contract with Brooke Bond essentially keeping the firm alive. After a change of ownership in 1959 the firm began to expand with not only the Heinkel license but also, bizarrely, a license to build the Elva Courier sports car and a range of miniature scooters called the 'Trobike'.
Trojan were moderately successful with the car, the Heinkel already had a good reputation in the UK as German-built cars had been imported since the 1950s. Trojan expanded the range, offering a full convertible version and a tiny panel van, though it's doubtful production of both exceeded double figures. Initially Trojan only offered LHD cars, as per their Irish predecessors, but soon an RHD option was added. Three- and four-wheeled versions were available but for tax reasons the vast majority sold were the former. Production came to an end in 1964 - by which time a 4 wheeled, RHD Trojan would set you back almost as much as a Mini - with a little over 6,000 having been built.

[Barrett]

In the interests of completeness I'm going to add a re-edited version of my JARC/Astra/Gill story that appeared on Autoshite ages ago here as precursor to the next installment, as I'm still attempting to pick apart the finer points of license-built Fuldamobils at the moment. I've also been through and cleaned up the spammy Flickr links and edited some of the more glaring spelling errors in the previous installments.

The Astra story began in 1954 when an entrepreneur by the name of Richard Christophrides noticed a gap in the market amongst the passenger-carrying economy cars for a similarly affordable panel van for use by small business owners. Looking for suitable premises and workers to build his design, he approached the obscure London coachbuilder Jarvis and entered into a partnership with them, forming JARC Motors Ltd. (JARvis, Richard Christophrides) in 1954. Jarvis were one of the myriad small, completely obscure British coachbuilding firms who had limped into the 1950s on the income from repair work. They had previously built a small handful of very attractive bodies on Bugatti and Rolls-Royce chassis, a lovely 1928 Phantom I is thought to be the only survivor of their work.
The car JARC built was given the unfortunate name of Little Horse, an allusion to its supposed quality as a tough dependable workhorse for the tradesman. The car was a tiny, bluff fronted beast with aluminium bodywork at the front and a crude wooden rear end. Motive power came from a 250cc Excelsior twin driving the rear wheels and mounted underneath the loadspace, which was naturally fairly small.



The Little Horse was not a success, production trickled along for a couple of years but how many were sold is unknown - no more than than a handful, and there are no known survivors. In 1956 the British Anzani Engineering co, long time manufacturers of small engines who had since diversified into building agricultural equipment, stepped in and purchased the rights to build the Little Horse from Christophrides, buying up all jigs and tools related to Little Horse production and also the stock of built and part-built vehicles. They soon relaunched the car as the Anzani Astra, with their own 322cc engine in place of the Excelsior unit. Other than a new grille badge proudly proclaiming the legend 'Astra' and a bonnet-mounted mascot no other design changes took place, the early advertising literature even showing featuring the same former Little Horse OYE 20 used in the JARC adverts, dressed up with a new Astra grille but not with the distinctive bonnet mascot or side badges of later Astras. Note that Anzani also offered an estate car version with rear seats - I can find no evidence that any of these were sold.




During the production of the Astra, around 1957, Anzani were approached by Jimmy Gill, of the Gill coachbuiling family, with an offer to buy rolling chassis to which he would then add a small coupe body of his own design. Gill was based in Paddington, not too far away from the cars origins at Jarvis, and so the Astra rolling chassis complete with all bodywork from the doors forward were transported from the Anzani works in Middlesex back to London where Gill added the aluminium rear sections. The tiny coupe was officially launched in 1958 as the Gill Getabout. Shortly afterwards a second model was added, a saloon with seating for four, the rear seats perched directly over the engine cover. Apart from the addition of corner bumpers as standard, the option of two-tone paint and yet another new grille style, the Gill was little changed from the Astra and proved to be even less successful than its predecessor, only around 5 cars were built of which none survive. A second saloon style designed by Peter Knott was offered but it's doubtful it was ever built and only seems to exist as a heavily retouched photograph of the coupe.




Since I last posted this installment I have stumbled upon yet another variation on the Gill. I can't quite decide if this is a photograph of an actual car or another '50s Photoshop attempt, it's certainly been heavily retouched but that was hardly unusual practice at that time. I'm fairly convinced that it is actually the real deal.
The lack of bumpers suggests it was an early effort at a Gill and the colour and number plates shows it's a different car to the two previously seen here, which means we know have photographic evidence of 3 of the supposed 5 Gills built!


By 1960 both Astra and Gill were dead, and Anzani sold the rights to the car to Australian businessman Harold Lightburn, who comprehensively redesigned it, changing it beyond all recognition from the original, and launched it in 1963 as the Lightburn Zeta. The 'startled guppy' looks were far too bizarre and the car received a hasty restyle but it wasn't enough to save it, and production ended in 1965 - but not before a tiny sports version designed by Gordon Bedson had been added to the range. Naturally the Zeta failed miserably, although it still managed to sell far more units than JARC, Anzani and Gill had manged collectively and today is considered something of a cult car in its homeland.