American city-car prototypes

Between 1959 and the end of the 1980s, smog, the federal electric-vehicle bills of 1966 and then the oil crises pushed large companies, and a few would-be ones, to build city cars of microcar size.source 1source 2 American Motors and General Motors built them, and so did Westinghouse, which made generators, and Bombardier in Quebec; so did a firm in Lansing, Michigan, that never got further.source 1source 2source 3source 4source 5 Most were electric microcars. Each is described below in date order, and none of them went on sale, except perhaps a handful of Westinghouse Markettes.source 4 The electric city car that did reach production in these years, Sebring-Vanguard’s CitiCar, has its own page.

Stephen P. Kish designed the Starlite at the Nu-Klea Automobile Corporation, or Kish-Nu-Way Industries, in the old Auto Body plant in Lansing, Michigan. It was planned as a two-seat electric runabout with a glass-fibre body and a separate motor in each wheel, each fed by three lead-acid batteries, with a seventh battery for the accessories; a clear acrylic top that lifted off was planned too. It was to weigh under 1,089 kg (2,400 lb), about 408 kg (900 lb) of it batteries, and go 97 km (60 miles) on an overnight charge.source 3 It was driven in the Lansing Centennial parade in 1959, and the unrestored car now in Nashville’s Lane Motor Museum matches the photograph of the parade car.source 3 Its length has not been found; its weight suggests it was larger than a microcar.

Westinghouse Electric, the maker of generators, built a little box-shaped saloon called the Markette. Its name and its range of 56 km (35 miles) suggested quick trips to the market, and by MTDM’s account an unknown but very small number ever got there.source 4 Nothing more has been found.

American Motors built the Amitron with Gulton Industries of Metuchen, New Jersey, prompted by the federal electric-vehicle bills of 1966 and the amendment to the Clean Air Act.source 1 Its batteries were the point. Two lithium-nickel-fluoride cells of 34 kg (75 lb) each carried it at a cruise, and two nickel-cadmium batteries of 11 kg (24 lb) gave bursts of power, enough for 0–80 km/h (50 mph) in 20 seconds; the whole set weighed 91 kg (200 lb), where lead-acid batteries for the same job would have weighed nearly a ton. Regenerative braking, the first in the American industry, charged them as the car slowed, with an ordinary feel to the pedal, and AMC claimed a range of 240 km (150 miles) at 80 km/h.source 1 The body was a snub-nosed three-seater 2,159 mm (85 in) long, with air-filled seat cushions and no side doors: the canopy hinged up and back.source 1

AMC spoke of selling to commuters within five years, and in 1968 it tried the drive in a converted Rambler American. The cost of the batteries ended it. In 1977 the car was repainted, given mirrors and renamed the Electron for AMC’s Concept 80 show, without a working powertrain.source 1 English Wikipedia sees its short, wide proportions in AMC’s Pacer and its tail in the Gremlin, and AMC’s electric work went on in the Jeep DJ-5E Electruck postal van from 1974.source 1 Where the car is now has not been established.

General Motors showed a family of commuter studies, the XP-512, at its Progress of Power event at Warren, Michigan, in 1969; the electric one, the XP-512E, is the best recorded, and an XP-512G and an XP-512H are known only by name.source 2 It was a two-seat electric bubble car with a glass-fibre body, a wrap-round glass canopy that opened upwards, and a front panel that opened as on the BMW Isetta. It was 2,192 mm (86.3 in) long, 1,422 mm (56 in) across, on a wheelbase of 1,321 mm (52 in), and weighed 567 kg (1,250 lb) with its 84-volt pack of lead-acid batteries and a 12-volt battery for the accessories. It went 93 km (58 miles) at 40 km/h (25 mph), or 76 km (47 miles) at its top speed of about 48 km/h (30 mph), and took seven hours to charge from a 115-volt socket.source 2

Small Cars Club records a 1979 prototype by the American Electric Company: a very simple two-seater on four small wheels, probably with a rear motor and rear-wheel drive, and a little luggage space under a lid at the front. Beyond that, it says, there is almost no information.source 6

Frank Winchell of General Motors wanted a one-seat commuter with a car’s stability and weather protection in a motorcycle’s size. His Lean Machine was a three-wheeler in two parts: a fixed lower power pod carrying the two rear wheels, and an upper passenger pod on the single front wheel that leaned into corners. The rider leaned it with pedals and worked the throttle and brakes by hand, on handlebars. There were two versions, and the second was said to reach 97 km/h (60 mph) in 6.8 seconds.source 7 GM said in 1989 that it was considering it for sale in congested California.source 7 It never was, but in 1993 it appeared with 16 other GM concept cars, valued together at $69 million, in Demolition Man.source 7

In the early 1980s Bombardier’s president, Laurent Beaudoin, came across the French voitures sans permis, the licence-free cars, and the quadricycles in Paris, but Yvon Lafortune, who ran the firm’s works at Valcourt, Quebec, found that they could not meet Canadian safety standards.source 5 So in 1984 Bombardier began Project Venus, for Vehicle, Economical, New, Utilitarian and Safe, with Daihatsu supplying the engine and gearbox. Two recent graduates, Jean Labbé and Louis Morasse, designed it in a converted building on a Bombardier family farm, known as the barn, under the chief engineer Yves Fontaine. A working prototype, a modified Japanese car, was ready in six months and was tested at Transport Canada’s centre, and two more prototypes followed.source 5

It was to cost under $5,000, cheap enough to go on a credit card, and to be sold through Canadian Tire in Canada and Sears in the United States; Daihatsu’s Charade and Rocky were to be built at Valcourt too, and The Globe and Mail put the cost of the scheme at up to $500 million. It never went into production. The one surviving prototype, with a working Daihatsu three-cylinder, a five-speed gearbox and fixed windows with dummy winders, is in the Musée de l’ingéniosité J. Armand Bombardier at Valcourt.source 5

Two of these prototypes are known to survive: the Nu-Klea Starlite, unrestored, at the Lane museum, and the Bombardier Venus at the Musée de l’ingéniosité J. Armand Bombardier in Valcourt, Quebec.source 3source 5 Where the Amitron, the XP-512E and the Lean Machine are now has not been established.