The designers

A billiard room at Lickey Grange

In 1921 Herbert Austin’s company was in receivership, and his board did not want the small car he had in mind, a real car for families whose budget stretched only to a motorcycle and sidecar, or to a cyclecar.source 1source 2 So he paid for it himself. He hired an 18-year-old draughtsman from the Longbridge works, Stanley Edge, and the two of them drew it in the billiard room of Austin’s house, Lickey Grange, from 1921 into 1922; Hagerty says Edge spent eight months there.source 1source 3source 4 Austin patented the design in his own name and took a royalty of two guineas on every car sold.source 1source 3 Edge later said that he had talked Austin into four cylinders and drawn the gearbox and clutch, while the styling was largely Austin’s.source 1 The Austin Seven was announced in July 1922, about 290,000 had been built by 1939, and in Britain it put the cyclecar makers out of business.source 1source 3source 2

The Seven came from a car maker, which makes it unusual. Most microcars were drawn by people from other trades. Ermenegildo Preti, Fritz Fend, Lawrie Bond and Shinroku Momose came from aircraft.source 5source 6source 7source 8 H. F. S. Morgan came from a railway drawing office, Norbert Stevenson from journalism, Cyril Cannell from boats and motorcycle fairings, Egon Brütsch and Bill Buckle from motor racing.source 9source 10source 11source 12source 13 From the 1990s on, the ideas came from a watch group, a scooter firm and a Formula 1 designer.source 14source 15source 16

How those designs travelled under licence is told in built under licence, and the aircraft firms that turned to small cars in aircraft makers.

The word that names the early small car was coined by an inventor of calculating machines. Léon Bollée, a son of the steam-carriage pioneer Amédée Bollée, built a light three-wheeler at Le Mans in 1895, the Léon Bollée Voiturette; voiturette, “little car”, was a word of his own, and he registered it as a name.source 17source 18 It was a tandem with the passenger in front, driven through a belt by a single-cylinder engine of about 3 hp.source 17source 18source 19 Le Mans made only the prototypes; Hurtu & Diligeon built several hundred for him, and in 1896 the British Motor Company acquired the rights for Britain.source 18source 19source 20 On 14 November 1896, on the run from London to Brighton that celebrated the end of the 4 mph limit, two Bollées arrived first and second.source 18source 17 The word became the general French term for a light car.source 17source 20

Some fifteen years later two students at the École Violet, an engineering school in Paris, wrecked their motorcycle. Robert Bourbeau and Henri Devaux used its V-twin to build a two-seater with the seats in tandem, which they called the Bédélia; French Wikipedia likens it to a cross between a motorcycle and a wingless aeroplane.source 21source 22

Although this may not be the first cyclecar ever made, it was undoubtedly the first to be produced on a commercial basis in France.

At Amiens on 13 July 1913 Bourbeau’s Bédélia won the class for four-wheeled cyclecars in the Cyclecar Grand Prix; W. G. McMinnies’s Morgan finished 2 min 45 s ahead, but the French rules counted three-wheelers as sidecars.source 24 In 1920 Devaux sold the rights to M. Binet, a dealer, and from then on Mahieux et Cie built the cars for him.source 21source 25 Marcel Violet, an Arts et Métiers engineer and a flier in the First World War, had built cyclecars since 1908 and is called the father of the French cyclecar: La Violette in 1909, the Violet-Bogey of 1913–⁠14, the Weler of 1920–⁠21 and, from 1924, the Sima-Violet, with his own air-cooled two-stroke flat-twin of about 500 cc in a tubular backbone.source 26source 27source 28

Henry Frederick Stanley Morgan learned his drawing on the railway. A clergyman’s son, born at the rectory of Stoke Lacy, Herefordshire, in 1881, Morgan was taken on in 1900 as a pupil of the chief engineer of the Great Western Railway at Swindon and spent about seven years in the drawing office; in 1906 he opened a garage at Malvern Link and operated one of the earliest bus services.source 9source 29 In 1909 he built the car that began the Morgan Three-Wheeler: a 7 hp Peugeot V-twin in a tubular three-wheeled chassis he had designed himself, with most of the machining done in the workshop of Malvern College.source 9source 29 The patent drawings of 1910 were the work of John Black, then a young clerk with the patent agents and later Sir John Black of Standard, and the Morgan Motor Co. Ltd was formed in 1912.source 9source 29 Morgan died in 1959, aged 77.source 9source 29

I drove the machine, which I called the Morgan Runabout, in 1909. It was most successful, due to its rigid frame, independent front-wheel suspension and light weight.

The most famous name of the period sold a design. Ettore Bugatti designed a small four-cylinder car and offered Peugeot a licence to build it; as the Peugeot Bébé it was made at Beaulieu, 3,095 of them up to 1916, more than of any other Bugatti design.source 30source 31source 32source 33

Jules Salomon, who had designed the Le Zèbre, worked at Citroën on the 5CV, the Citroën 5HP, with Edmond Moyet, who had also come from Le Zèbre.source 34source 35source 36 Moyet drew a cyclecar of his own at home in the evenings; two backers, Akar and Lamy, put up the money, and it became the Amilcar CC.source 36source 37 Salomon went on to help Lucien Rosengart set up the Austin Seven under licence in France in 1927–⁠28, as the Rosengart LR2.source 34source 38

Charles Mochet had built aeroplanes at Marseille around 1910 and small cars in Morocco; his wife thought a bicycle too dangerous for their son Georges, so in 1925 he built the boy a four-wheeled pedal car; demand followed, and the pedal car became the Mochet Vélocar.source 39source 40source 41 After 1945 Georges Mochet fitted engines, then made licence-free microcars such as the Mochet CM-125, until the licence law of 1957–⁠58 closed the business.source 42source 43 Marcel Leyat, a Centrale-trained engineer and an aviation pioneer, believed in the propeller: no clutch, gearbox or differential. His Leyat Hélica, on sale from 1919, was a plywood fuselage on four wheels, with tandem seats, an airscrew at the front and steering by the rear wheels.source 44source 45

In the summer of 1931 a front-wheel-drive prototype for a small Fiat, by Oreste Lardone, caught fire on its first outing with Giovanni Agnelli aboard, and Agnelli banned front-wheel drive at Fiat.source 46source 47 Antonio Fessia and Tranquillo Zerbi handed the project, coded Zero A, to a young aero-engine engineer, Dante Giacosa.source 46source 47 His economies made the Fiat 500 Topolino: a 569 cc side-valve four ahead of the front axle, the radiator behind and above it with thermosiphon cooling and no water pump, and petrol fed by gravity.source 46source 48source 49 On 7 October 1934 he and Fessia took turns at the wheel of the final prototype and reached 82 km/h (51 mph).source 46source 47

In occupied Paris the designer Paul Arzens, trained at the Beaux-Arts and later known for shaping French railway locomotives, built an egg-shaped electric car, L’Œuf électrique, in 1942, to get round the occupiers’ restrictions on fuel; its story belongs with the electric microcars.source 50source 51source 52 In his office at Levallois-Perret, while his works at Molsheim were under German occupation, Ettore Bugatti drew a tiny two-seater, the Bugatti Type 68, with a supercharged four of about 320 to 370 cc; it was abandoned after his death in August 1947.source 53source 54

After 1945 several of the best-known small cars came from people who had designed aircraft. Ermenegildo Preti, born in Milan in 1918, was a designer of gliders and light aircraft for the Politecnico di Milano’s gliding centre; 32 of his CVV 6 Canguro gliders were built for the Italian Air Force.source 5 In the war he had foreseen the shortages to come and thought about a very small car.source 55 For Renzo Rivolta, a maker of refrigerators and scooters, he laid down the concept of the Iso Isetta and left the body and chassis to Pierluigi Raggi, a young engineer who also came from aeronautics; Genoni, another colleague, adapted the motorcycle engine.source 55source 56 Italian Wikipedia traces the front door to Preti’s wartime AL.12 glider, whose nose was hinged on one side and opened fully, a design described in his degree thesis; and it was Preti who, late in the work, proposed mounting the steering column on the door.source 55 The first prototype had a single rear wheel, which proved dangerous in tests and gave way to two wheels set close together.source 55source 56 BMW bought the rights in 1954 and built the BMW Isetta.source 55source 56

Fritz Fend, the son of a Rosenheim grocer, read aeronautics at Munich’s Technische Hochschule and worked through the war testing and developing aircraft, including on the Me 262 programme at the Rechlin test centre.source 57source 6source 58 The Messerschmitt Owners’ Club insists that he was never employed by Messerschmitt.source 58 His first vehicle was the Fend Flitzer of 1948, a single-seat tricycle, an invalid carriage for those who had lost limbs in the fighting, worked by hand at first and later by small engines; about 282 were built in three series, and in 1950 one climbed the Grossglockner without a stop at an average of 40 km/h (25 mph).source 59source 57source 60 The Rosenheim city archive records his aim: a vehicle that would not be expensive but affordable for everyone.source 57 Short of capital, he went to the idle Messerschmitt works at Regensburg in January 1952, and its company RSM built his two-seat design as the Messerschmitt KR175 from 1953 and the Messerschmitt KR200 from 1955.source 61 British owners long believed that Professor Messerschmitt had designed it himself.source 62 In 1957 Fend and the industrialist Valentin Knott formed FMR to carry on, and added the KR201 Roadster and the four-wheeled FMR Tg500.source 61

Lawrie Bond had been an aeronautical designer at Blackburn Aircraft in the war, then ran a small engineering firm in Blackpool and later Longridge, and raced 500 cc specials of his own without great success.source 7source 63 In 1948 he showed a tiny aluminium runabout for shopping and short journeys, built at Longridge; his works was too small to make it, so Sharp’s Commercials of Preston did, as the Bond Minicar, and Bond soon sold them the rights.source 63source 7source 64 In 1956 he teamed up with Charles Panter of Berkeley Coachworks, a caravan maker who wanted something to fill the slack seasons, and the result was the Berkeley.source 65source 66

something good enough to win World 750cc races... but cheap, safe, easily repairable and pretty

Motor Sport also credited Bond with the Opperman Unicar of 1956; RM’s catalogue names either Bond or George Trolley.source 67source 68 Gabriel Voisin had built a practical aeroplane in 1907, and his firm went on to become the first to mass-produce aircraft; later he built luxury cars with the engineer André Lefebvre, later of the Citroën 2CV and DS.source 69source 70 In 1949 he designed a microcar round a 125 cc Gnome et Rhône motorcycle engine, the Voisin Biscooter; the nationalised SNECMA saw no future in it, no French firm would put it into production, and it was made in Spain as the Biscúter.source 70source 69source 71source 72 At Dingolfing the farm-machinery firm of Hans Glas had the Goggomobil drawn by Glas, his son Andreas and Karl Dompert, a former aircraft designer, with an engine by Felix Dozekal, formerly of Adler.source 73 Paul Kleinschnittger built the Kleinschnittger F125 partly from material stripped from wrecked military aircraft.source 74

Norbert Stevenson was a freelance journalist, formerly of the Rhein-Zeitung, who had studied mechanical engineering for one wartime semester in Berlin; what he wanted was a very simple two-seater with a pair of front wheels and a small engine at the back.source 75source 10 From the summer of 1949 he was backed by Karl Schmitt, who sold Bosch equipment wholesale in Fulda and whose firm serviced emergency generators, and in June 1953 Stevenson and the coachbuilder Wilhelm Lehnebach shaped the rounded body of the Fuldamobil in ten days.source 10source 76source 77 Built in Germany from 1950 to 1969, it was probably the longest-built microcar of all.source 76

Egon Brütsch, the son of a Stuttgart stocking manufacturer, raced motorcycles in 1929–⁠31 and cars, some of his own building, from 1935 to 1950.source 12 Between 1951 and 1958 he designed about a dozen Brütsch microcars, mostly small glass-fibre three-wheelers, none of them made in more than low double figures, and he lived by selling licences: to Spatz in Germany, Belcar in Switzerland and Air-Tourist, maker of the Avolette, in France.source 12source 78source 79 In November 1954 a Stuttgart court put his assets under sequestration, and Spatz won an injunction that stopped him calling himself its designer.source 80source 79 His single-seat Brütsch Mopetta was legally a moped, taxed at DM 15 a year, and in December 1956 auto motor und sport called him tireless, a creator of beautiful plastic cars.source 81source 82

The Frisky was conceived by Captain Raymond Flower, a racing driver and head of the Cairo Motor Co, after the Suez crisis ended his Egyptian car projects; Gordon Bedson, formerly of Kieft and Vickers, and Keith Peckmore engineered it at Henry Meadows in Wolverhampton, and Giovanni Michelotti styled it for Vignale.source 83source 84source 85 In Sydney the dealer and racer Bill Buckle, who took the Goggomobil franchise in 1958, designed the glass-fibre Goggomobil Dart, and Stan Brown, a panel beater, built the prototype.source 13source 86source 87

Two decades on, Giacosa drew Fiat’s second minimum car. Vittorio Valletta asked him for something cheaper than the 600 that a working family could buy and run, a car to move Italians off their scooters; the answer was the Fiat Nuova 500 of 1957, with an air-cooled four-stroke twin at the back.source 88source 89 Its shape models achieved a drag coefficient of 0.38, and many engine layouts were tried before the upright twin was chosen.source 88source 90 For the estate of 1960, the Fiat 500 Giardiniera, Giacosa laid the twin on its side, a sogliola, like a sole, and slid it under a flat load floor; the water-cooled engine of the Fiat 126 Bis was later laid flat in the same way.source 88source 91source 92source 93

In Austria Erich Ledwinka, the son of Tatra’s Hans Ledwinka and chief designer at Steyr-Daimler-Puch, gave Fiat’s body his own flat-twin engine and running gear to make the Steyr-Puch 500; he wanted a proper four-seat small car that could cope with Alpine roads.source 94source 95 He also led the design of the Steyr-Puch Haflinger.source 96

In Japan the Subaru 360 came from what was left of the Nakajima aircraft empire. Its project leader, Shinroku Momose, took a degree in aeronautics at Tokyo Imperial University in 1941 and worked at Nakajima on supercharging the Homare aero-engine; in 1949 he designed Japan’s first monocoque rear-engined bus.source 8source 97 His team of former aircraft engineers treated the car as an airframe, to carry four adults inside the kei car limits of 3.0 by 1.3 m (9 ft 10 in by 4 ft 3 in) and 360 cc.source 97source 98source 8 Ryūichi Tomiya had designed Datsun bodies before the war, and the Datsun rabbit mascot.source 99 By the Japan Automotive Hall of Fame’s account, his old Nissan colleague Yutaka Katayama, watching gulls over Yokohama harbour before the war, had wished for a little car that moved as lightly as a gull in flight; after the war Katayama urged him on, and Tomiya drew one for Suminoe, the Flying Feather, and then the Fuji Cabin, both by his rule of the most work for the least consumption.source 100source 99

Cyril Cannell founded Peel Engineering at Peel, on the Isle of Man, in the late 1940s to make glass-fibre motorcycle fairings and boats; its first car, the Peel Manxcar, came in 1955, and a hovercraft followed in 1961.source 11source 101source 102source 103 Cannell and Henry Kissack designed the Peel P50 as a study of the smallest dimensions a car could have; it was shown at Earls Court in 1962 with no engine, and sold from 1963 with a 49 cc moped engine at £199.source 101source 103source 104source 105 The Peel Trident is credited to Cannell too.source 106

Tom Karen was a designer at Ogle Design, at Letchworth. Ogle offered Reliant a sporty three-wheeler; when Reliant bought Bond in 1969, its managing director, Ray Wiggin, decided to sell the design as a Bond, and the tangerine Bond Bug was launched in June 1970.source 107source 108source 109 Karen also designed the Raleigh Chopper bicycle and oversaw the landspeeder props for Star Wars (1977), one of them built on a Bug chassis.source 108source 110source 107source 109 He died, aged 96, on the last day of 2022.source 110

Cheap and electric cars brought in more outsiders. Bob Beaumont, a former Chrysler-Plymouth dealer, built the CitiCar at Sebring, Florida, from 1974, designed with Jim Muir.source 111source 112source 113 Sir Clive Sinclair, known for his pocket calculators and his ZX81 and ZX Spectrum home computers, put £8.3 million from the sale of Sinclair Research shares into Sinclair Vehicles in 1983 to make the Sinclair C5.source 114source 115 In India Shankarrao Kulkarni, a self-taught engineer from Maharashtra whose schooling ended at about 12, built the Meera; and Ratan Tata had promised a car at one lakh rupees, a price he kept when the Tata Nano was unveiled on 10 January 2008.source 116source 117source 118source 119

Nicolas Hayek, who founded the Swatch group, wanted a car in the Swatch manner: small and cheap, its body panels as changeable as a watch’s, with electric or hybrid drive.source 14 Volkswagen was his first partner and dropped out; in 1994 Daimler-Benz joined him in Micro Compact Car AG.source 120source 14 Daimler-Benz insisted on a small turbocharged petrol engine and refused wheel-hub electric motors, and on 1 November 1998 Hayek sold his shares.source 14

Der heutige benzinbetriebene Smart ist ein Produkt aus dem Hause Daimler-Benz und hat nichts mit den Plänen des einstigen Swatch-Teams gemein.

The Smart Fortwo, then, was Hayek’s idea and Daimler-Benz’s car; of his plans, the glass towers he wanted the cars sold from survived as the Smart Center towers.source 14source 121

Gordon Murray came from the other end of motoring: he had designed Brabham and McLaren Formula 1 cars and the McLaren F1 road car.source 16source 122 His Gordon Murray T.25, unveiled at the Smith School in Oxford on 28 June 2010, was 2.4 m (94 in) long, with a 660 cc three-cylinder engine and a central driving seat like the McLaren F1’s.source 123 The real product was the way it was made: iStream, in which composite panels are bonded to a frame of steel tubes, and which Autocar made its Idea of the Year for 2008.source 123source 16

The simplified assembly process means that an assembly plant can be designed to be 20% of the size of a conventional factory. This could reduce capital investment in the assembly plant by approximately 80%.

The electric T.27, developed with Zytek, weighed 680 kg (1,499 lb), passed a 40 per cent offset crash test and won the 2011 RAC Future Car Challenge outright.source 122source 124source 16 Neither car went into production.

Wim Ouboter, founder of the Micro kick-scooter firm, and his sons Oliver and Merlin showed an electric homage to the Isetta, the Microlino, at Geneva in March 2016, almost as a publicity stunt; more than 500 reservations in two days persuaded them to build it.source 15source 125 Like Bollée’s tricar more than a century before, it came from outside the small-car trade.