Austrian microcars

Austria’s early-1950s microcars were built while car imports were restricted, and they died when the borders opened. English Wikipedia dates the liberalisation to 1954. A report in auto motor und sport in mid-1955 shows cars already freed, and only one class still protected: motorcycles under 250 cc.source 1source 2

A German reader wrote in 1956 of the many German cars the Austrians had imported since the change.source 3 Austrian rules also shaped cars built elsewhere. The Goggomobil was given a 300 cc engine for tax reasons for export to Austria in 1955, and the three-wheeled export BMW Isetta was built chiefly for Austria, which taxed and licensed three-wheelers as motorcycles.source 4source 5 Austria’s own makers are below, roughly in the order they began. The Steyr-Puch 500, a car of a different kind, has its own page.

A. Felber & Co, originally Adolf Felber, had made motorcycle sidecars and trailers in Vienna since 1923.source 6 In September 1952 it showed a prototype Autoroller with a 350 cc engine of 12 PS, at a planned price of about 20,000 Schilling. The production T 400 had a 398 cc Rotax twin two-stroke of 15 PS, driving the single rear wheel; it was 2,750 mm (108 in) long and was designed by Ernst Marold.source 6source 1

It had no doors. To get in, you tilted the roof and side windows back as one unit. Inside, the driver sat in front, a child-size seat sat behind on the left, and a normal passenger seat sat diagonally behind on the right. Early cars had cycle wings that turned with the front wheels, later ones fixed wings, and all of them were painted the same light green, in machinery paint.source 1 About 400 were built, in 1952–⁠54 by German Wikipedia’s dates or 1952–⁠53 by English Wikipedia’s.source 6source 1

The owners had a club, the Austrian Autoroller Club, whose newsletter is held by the Austrian National Library. In 1954, at Marold’s own wedding, a procession of Felbers escorted the wedding car past the Karlskirche in Vienna.source 1 Once imports were free, Felber stopped making cars. It sold Heinkel, Trojan, Reliant and Spatz three-wheelers instead, and its main business became Austromat industrial washing machines.source 6source 1

The Libelle Fahrzeugbau- und Vertriebsgesellschaft built its Allwetter-Autoroller, the “all-weather auto-scooter”, from 1952 to 1954. In spite of the name it was an open two-seater without doors, with an emergency hood.source 7 It had a 199 cc Rotax single of 8.5 PS (6.25 kW) and four gears, reached 80 km/h (50 mph), climbed 28 per cent and used 3 litres of mixture per 100 km (94 mpg). Forty were built.source 7 Where the firm was based, and who designed the car, is not recorded.

The Viennese coachbuilder Hofmann & Moldrich took Felber rolling chassis and gave them an egg-shaped coupé body in 0.8 mm (1/32 in) aluminium, rather like the Fuldamobil. It built 10 or 12 of them in 1953–⁠54.source 6source 1 One survives, in the Automobil-Museum Aspang, in Lower Austria.source 6source 1

Hans Jörg Meister (1939–⁠2024) founded Fahrzeugbau Ing. Hans Meister in 1962 at Elisabethinergasse 8 in Graz. He began with vehicles for disabled drivers, which places his firm among the makers of invalid carriages, and in 1969 added larger, more car-like vehicles. Production moved to Thal, near Graz, and ended in 1979, after about 1,500 vehicles of all types.source 8

The G 5 N, K5 and T 5 had Puch moped engines of 49 cc. The G 5 N Mopedkabine had a plastic body on a tubular frame, drove one rear wheel and reached 40 km/h (25 mph); the K5 came open or closed, and the T 5 was a transporter. Alexander Diego Fritz has written their history, Die Knatterkugel (2013), and a red closed K5 has a leading role in Karl Markovics’s film Nobadi (2019).source 8

Megu Metall- und Gußwarenhandels-Ges.m.b.H. was a Viennese trading company, bought in 1958 by Ragnar Alexander Mathéy (1920–⁠2003), once general secretary of the Österreichische Saurerwerke. He had sold Lohner and Kosty scooters, financed Otto Kauba’s Kauba Lux scooters and designed the Bobby scooter of 1955–⁠56.source 9 Megu’s vehicles, the Mopetta, the Student, the Boy and the Dienstmann, were three-wheelers with one wheel at the back and a 50 cc Puch engine, built with Wilhelm Gesierich’s workshop in Vienna-Favoriten and Dr. Mathéy-Fahrzeugbau of Haslau.source 9

In the Mopetta the front, with its windscreen, roof and moped handlebars, swung aside to let you in. The two seats were in tandem, with the driver far forward over the front axle, and a hood cost extra.source 9 When they were built is not settled: the dates given are 1967 alone, 1958–⁠74 and 1966–⁠72. The company was dissolved in 2005.source 9 Apart from the name, the Megu Mopetta seems to have nothing to do with the Brütsch Mopetta.

Two Felbers belonged to the RRR museum (Roller, Rollermobile & Wurlitzer) at Eggenburg. That collection was dissolved and largely sold by the Dorotheum in July 2020, but the two Felbers were not in the sale.source 6 English Wikipedia knows of one more under restoration in Serbia and one in Bavaria, and two Felbers attended the Nordkapp rally in 1999.source 1 The only Möve is at Aspang.source 6 The Eggenburg museum also had a Libelle, and where it went after 2020 is not known.source 7 Some Meisters survive, but their numbers have not been found.