Small wonders

Never mind that the result of these regulations – championing secondary safety at the expense of primary safety – has obliterated visibility by ever-shrinking glasshouses. Such restricted visibility means you’re less likely to see a hazard and more likely to have an accident. And even if the car’s final ever act is to save you from injury, would it not have been better simply to have been able to see and therefore not have the crash in the first place? Sceptical? Sit in any modern car and then slip into something born before such concerns started to gain traction – like a Hillman Imp. So dazzling is the contrast, it’s like escaping a pillbox to an empty commercial greenhouse.

Small cars that were great to drive belonged to an older generation. These four-wheeled founding fathers proved that less is indeed more, the immediacy of their dynamics free from filtration or needless sophistication. The original Mini is a prime example – a small car developed regardless of cost but so accomplished it blossomed into a motorsport giant killer. Little wonder that in 1962 this new segment inspired a new magazine called Small Car and Mini Owner. It survives today, simply as Car. Dante Giacosa’s ‘Nuova Cinquecento’ Fiat 500 was another.

Indeed it’s tempting to rattle off a whole list of 1960s A-segment superstars, but to demonstrate the astonishing creativity of the era, you need instead to look at the ideas which, even then, were just too ‘yeah baby’ to make it into production…

The Mini was a phenomenon, but far from perfect – especially in terms of complexity, build cost and being rushed to market. It’s strange to think that attempts to replace a car that would live for 41 years started after just eight. But rather than simply polish or improve the original, in 1967 BMC’s Alec Issigonis opted for a clean-sheet design and started work on a project codenamed ‘9X’.

Unfortunately, this was a troubled time for BMC, which was soon to be taken over by Leyland to create an expensive, industrial punchline to a not very good joke.

The two-box hatchback styling (still a very new innovation for the era) was the combined effort of in-house stylists and Pininfarina, yet the result was rather plain. Inside, the strip speedo dashboard was typically minimalist and to make the most of space, the Mini’s sliding windows concept was retained.

But gone were the heavy front and rear subframes. As was Alex Moulton’s rubber cone suspension, replaced by front MacPherson struts and a rear beam axle, resulting in a kinder, more compliant ride.

Under the short bonnet was an all-new 750-1000cc engine range codenamed ‘DX’ – a lightweight, part-alloy, siamesed, belt-driven OHC unit, capable of 60bhp per litre (versus the Mini’s A-series’ 40bhp). And where the A-series powertrain weighed 154kg, this came in at just 91kg. The DX used a modular concept which would reach production in the E-series, where larger capacities were achieved by additional cylinders. An 1100cc ‘six’ was planned for the larger five-door 10X that would have replaced the Austin and Morris 1100. Drive was transmitted to the front wheels via a new quieter two-rail gearbox located beneath and slightly behind the engine.

The 9X was faster, quieter and even shorter than the Mini. Crucially, it consisted of 40 per cent fewer components which would have resulted in a five per cent drop in construction cost.

But clever as the DX engine was, its fine engineering tolerances made it impossible for BMC to mass produce. Add in new Leyland bosses and Mini sales recovering during the 1967 financial crisis sparked by the Six Day War, and it was curtains for the 9X. No doubt the very fuel crisis which gave the Mini a reprieve called into question the wisdom of building a six-cylinder supermini.

And while BMC was by now firmly wedded to having the engine in the front driving the front wheels, in 1968 Fiat used its old rear-engined, rear-wheel drive drivetrain to revolutionise the taxi.

Unveiled at the 50th Turin Motor Show, the asymmetric 850 CityTaxi was designed by the brilliant but short-lived Pio Manzù, an aesthetic polymath who designed the Fiat 127 but died in a single car accident in his wife’s Fiat 500 aged just 30. Planned to replace taxis based on adaptations of the defunct 600 Multipla, this purpose-built taxi possessed a number of neat touches and much innovative thinking.

On the left-hand side the CityTaxi had a conventional, front-hinged door for driver access, with safety touches such as an articulated steering wheel and a padded, deformable dashboard which incorporated an instrument panel, the taximeter and a small TV screen. But access to the three rear seats, plus an occasional folding seat, was gained via a huge powered sliding door on the car’s nearside, taking up most of the space between the wheels. Even its bright orange colour was intended to make the CityTaxi easy to spot in traffic.

As was typical of Manzù’s work, the CityTaxi was a clean, conspicuously glassy design that affords the sort of generous interior space that many of today’s claustrophobic cars couldn’t hope to possess. Sadly this cute little orange cab would not see production, probably due to the expense of its unique body as well as the fact that the stopgap 850 model was due to be replaced by the 127 in 1971. Having said that, a number of the CityTaxi’s design touches would live on in the 1972 Fiat 126 and the 850-based 1974 Seat 133.

Then there were designs which were just way too far out baby, like the XP6 (or Experimental Prototype 6) city car from Marcos. This was – yes really, honestly – the company’s proposal for a single-seat city car. (Indeed, given the Wiltshire firm’s predilection for names beginning with ‘M’, would Marcos have been able to resist christening it the Mono…?)

Details are few and far between, but the XP6 rode on 10in Mini wheels and was tiny, measuring just 4ft 4in (1321mm) wide, 9ft 1in (2769mm) long and 3ft 6.5in (1080mm) tall.

Designed in November 1964, XP6 was a mid-engined, rear-wheel drive car with double wishbone front suspension and trailing arms at the back with coilovers all around. Its sole occupant and driver climbed aboard via a large front-hinged canopy along the lines of the Bond Bug.

But so murky are the details of this car or, I should say, car design, that even fleeting references to it are few and far between. Because it was never more than an idea, it’s not clear whether the XP6 would have been designed by the Adams brothers or if it featured the company’s clever stressed plywood chassis, although the XP6 predated the 1968 Mantis XP racer which did feature such a chassis beneath its fibre-glass body. Would it have been powered by a Mini powertrain? A clever choice, but the drawings only state ‘approx position of engine’ which is perhaps as far as the project progressed. Particularly given the company launched the Mini Marcos in 1965 which fulfilled the role of a smaller, junior Marcos with greater ease, profitability and far less Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds thinking.

So now we must go back to the future of Europe’s small cars and their likely reprieve thanks to pressure from European manufacturers on regulators to make concessions to ensure the survival of A-segment cars. Consequently there is a line of small, city-friendly cars heading our way, meaning astute Europeans will not after all be left envious of Japanese Kei class thinking.

Urbane city cars with familiar names have been developed using the retro revival approach – mimic, enlarge, spec up and make aspirational – which was applied to the VW Beetle, Mini, Fiat 500 and, more recently, an increasing proportion of Renault’s back catalogue. Expect to see hybrid/EV revivals of the Fiat Panda – sorry, Pandina – the Citroën 2CV and the up!-ish ID.1.

These will certainly be a sight for urban eyes on Britain’s battered roads. A network which has never recovered from 2001 when the UK government implemented the EU’s four-tonne HGV weight increase to 44 tonnes without properly thinking through the consequences. The subsequent introduction of ever larger, heavier cars and EVs in particular have only exacerbated the situation. What remains to be seen from this promised A-segment regeneration, though, is whether they will have enough room in them to contain personalities worthy of their predecessors. Identities formed using a compound of simplicity, lightness, pragmatism and modest mechanical grip to cultivate little fire-crackers which oozed charm and joie de vivre.

What it is safe to speculate though, is that this fresh intake won’t be eccentric or willing to blindly leap into the technical unknown. It’s also safe to bet that Marcos won’t be entering the ring with a tiny, idiosyncratic single-seater – which, for anyone with a romantic bone in their body, is a real shame.

With thanks to Marcos Heritage (www.marcosheritage.com)