A short history of the Micro Car (Real Sized Cars!)

[RDean58]

or My quest for models of small cars.

My fascination with small cars began innocently enough. I bought a model of the Morris Mini at a LHS. As a companion piece I picked up the Fiat 500D. Then it snowballed in fast order. I got the Renault 4CV, and the Citroen 2CV. I then stumbled upon the nirvana of small car nations, Japan.

Back in the early 50’s the Japan government set up a micro class for cars. Originally these cars could not be any larger than 9.2 feet long, and 3.3 feet wide! Engine size was limited to 150 cc(9.2 CI) for 4 strokes and 100 cc (6.1 CI) for 2 stroke engines. Compare this to the original Morris Mini, which was 10 feet long, 4.9 feet wide, and had a 4 cylinder engine of 848 cc (51.8 CI).

Keijidousha Cars or K-cars as they are known (also yellow plate cars) are cars built for the Japan Domestic Market (JDM) and Europe. The current specifications for these cars are a length of 11.2 FT (3.4m) long, 4.8 FT (1.48m) wide and an engine size of no larger than 660 cc (40.3 CI). They also have a restriction of only being able to create a maximum of 64 horsepower.

This regulation was put in place because some of these micro cars were developing more power than larger Corollas and Civics. This was accomplished by the use of turbo-charges or superchargers on these micro engines.

These micro cars are very popular in Japan today because they have tax advantages, parking advantages, are really cheap to own & operate, easy to drive and get really good gas milage (around 40 mpg in the city).

There is a company in Canada that is doing some “gray market†http://www.japanoid.com/ importing of these K cars. Restrictions in Canada allow these cars to be imported if they are at least 15 years old. In America though, the cars have to be at least 25 years old and a lot of times the government wants to see crash tests on them.

The only other car that meets the classification of a K car is the Mercedes Bemz Smart ForTwo. It will be interesting to see how that sells in America. If it is a success then perhaps we may be able to get some of these K cars for ourselves.

As for my collection of small models of small cars, I have a few, here are the pictures of the kits I have to build.

Thanks for reading!

[Darin Bastedo]

tell the truth...you're just trying to save money on model paint.

[Harry P.]

If you're into small, oddball cars you HAVE to check this place out:

http://www.microcarmuseum.com

[mr moto]

For microcar fans, here's a link to a most amusing video of the Peel P50. Enjoy!

http://www.microcarmuseum.com/video/p50.html

There are other great microcar videos at that site also.

[Modelmartin]

Holy Dimunitive Transportation, Batman! I love microcars. Thanks for the link to the Microcar museum. I will have to get to the Southern NNL next year and reserve a day to go see the little guys!

[southpier]

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2014/07/these-glorious-three-wheeled-microcars.html

[Art Anderson]

Of course, in the UK, Western Europe, and here in the USA, a century or so ago, "Cyclecars" were a pretty wild fad. Basically those were very small cars, generally looking much like full-sized automobiles, but most were built using motorcycle or 1-2 cylinder aircooled industrial engines, and glorified motorcycle wheels and tires. Even Ford Motor Company built a prototype cyclecar version of the 1914 Model T--less than half the size of the production T.

Art