microcarfan
  • Licence-free car
  • France
  • Girls’ names

Pussycar

Also known as Otokart, Pussy Car

A doorless plastic runabout called Valérie, built by an advertising man who soon found he could not sell it at a sensible price, and so built more, with girls’ names, to hire out instead.

No photograph yet. The pictures found so far show Ponthieu’s later Automodule, not the Pussycar. We will never draw one.

At a glance

The spec plate

Pussycar

Valérie and Eugénie

Built
1966–⁠1968From 1966; no trace of the marque after 1968
Country
FranceThe work of a Paris advertising man
Maker
Jean-Pierre PonthieuAn advertising man and maker of promotional vehicles
Engine
Sachs two-strokeIts size is not recorded
Production
a few dozen?The old site’s guess; a 2016 blog says more than 200
Survives
YesA few, all with a Pussycar maker’s plate

Not yet recordedpower, top speed, length, weight, seats and wheels and layout.

How big is it?

True proportion

Length unknown

No reliable length has been found. The Fiat 500, the Peel P50 and the adult stay, so the gap is shown, not hidden.

Drawn at true proportion. The track is 3.6 metres long; the adult stands at the same scale. The Peel P50 is the smallest production car, on every page for comparison.

Beside its contemporaries

The French microcars on the road in 1966, on the same 3.5 m scale. Lengths of cars without a page yet come from the census and are unverified.

  1. Solyto1952–⁠1974 · France

    2.45 m

  2. Pussycar1966–⁠1968 · France

The story

History

Jean-Pierre Ponthieu worked in advertising in Paris and was already known for highly original promotional vehicles for the motor trade when, in 1966, he built the Valérie.1 It was a small, doorless cabriolet: a polyester body on a basic tube chassis, 8-inch wheels and a Sachs two-stroke engine. Legally it was a cyclomoteur, a moped, and so one of France’s licence-free cars.12 The author of the original microcarfan.com called it a real town car, with nothing superfluous and everything necessary, and thought the newcomers of ten or fifteen years later did no better.1

Sold, then hired

Ponthieu soon saw that a vehicle like this could not be sold at a price the market would pay. So he turned to originality instead, and built a family of eccentric little cars to hire out for exhibitions, fairs, openings and advertising.1 The first was the Eugénie, styled like a car of about 1900 and, for all its size, well proportioned. More girls’ names were announced: Pamela, Rosalie, Jennifer and Tiphanie. The old site printed a photograph of the Tiphanie but was not sure all of them were built. Valérie and Eugénie were the most publicised and the most built, and traces of them turn up in period advertisements and in fashion magazines, fashion being another of Ponthieu’s fields.1

Dans ce monde où tout est banal et laid, il faut savoir créer du beau et de l’insolite.

Attributed to Jean-Pierre Ponthieu, quoted without a date by the original microcarfan.com and, in English, by Messy Nessy Chic in 2016. In English: “In this world where everything is banal and ugly, one must know how to create the beautiful and the unusual.”1

The car was officially presented as the Otokart, but the few known survivors all carry a Pussycar maker’s plate, which is why that is the name it goes by. By 1968 neither name left any further trace.1 How many were made is a guess. The old site suggested a few dozen, with a question mark; a blog of 2016 says more than 200, without giving a source.12

The Automodule

Ponthieu went on to something stranger. According to the old site, L’Auto-Journal presented his Automodule in 1970 as the automobile of the year 2000: a spherical machine that could rise, sink, rear up and travel crabwise, with a 248 cc engine and a three-speed hydraulic transmission. In normal running its rear wheel lifted, so it counted as a tricycle.1 The 2016 blog dates it to 1968 instead.2

What we know, and do not

The old site’s owner had a Pussycar of his own, unpainted when he wrote about it, and posted a short film of it in 2009.13 Almost everything here comes from his page. The car’s wheels, size, weight, speed and price in francs all wait for a period source: a road test or Salon report of 1966–⁠67, the fashion features, or a newsreel.

Sources

Almost one source

The Pussycar rests almost entirely on the old microcarfan.com, whose owner had one. A search of Gallica for “pussycar” and “otokart” found nothing. Sources are given as plain text; the links are on the Credits page.

  1. The original microcarfan.com (2006–⁠2016), marque page “PUSSYCAR”, one collector’s account, read in full from the archived copies of 2010 and 2013.
  2. “Presenting the Pussycar: the maddest cars to ever hit the streets of Paris”, Messy Nessy Chic, 11 March 2016. A blog; its claims are not confirmed elsewhere.
  3. The original microcarfan.com, video page “LA PUSSYCAR” (2009); only the title and comments survive.