bmw isetta

The smart is the newest city car, but not the first

words matt stone

BELOW subcompact cars and minicars live microcars. They’re the ones that squirt through traffic and can park in places too small even for a Mini or 2CV. There’ve been many different brands over time—they were most prolific in the 1950s—but the model more often associated with the microcar phenom is the Isetta. It was designed in the early part of that decade and originally built and marketed by Iso, the Italian refrigeration-equipment company that built the Grifo, Rivolta, and other Iso luxury GTs in the 1960s and early 1970s. BMW licensed the Isetta design, reengineered it to accept its own one-cylinder powerplant, and launched it into the marketplace in 1955. Performance was a relative issue; what do you expect with only 10 horsepower aboard? There was but one door, that…

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MotorTrend (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2008

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