Bubble car
A microcar is a particularly and unusually small automobile. Typically, they seat only the driver and a single passenger, and many have only three wheels. Microcars have usually been designed and produced as an economic measure when materials have been scarce and/or fuel is scarce and expensive. 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 and KR200 even had aircraft-style bubble canopies, giving rise to the term bubble car to refer to all these post-war microcars. The economy of operating such a small car was often contributed to by the fact that three-wheeled microcars were treated as motorcycles for tax and insurance purposes in many places. 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 towards the unorthodox and even bizarre.
The smart car launched in 1998 could be seen as a modern re-invention of the microcar principle. Like the Japanese keicars, it is of relatively conventional design.
Famous microcars include:
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