Sorry, but it can’t be true. The slowest car in the world, as of this morning, is a Ruby Red late model Ford F-150 pickup truck with a Retired Military license plate and a “God is Love” sticker on the tailgate. Still have the claw marks in my steering wheel to prove it.
I love how the engine goes in the tiny rear compartment, but there’s still plenty of room left over back there for luggage and the spare tire.
Among major car benchmarks, that’s less power per weight than 1960’s VW Beetles. The 1967 I had in the 70’s-80’s had a rebuilt engine from a 1963, nominally 40hp, car weighed around 1800#, 45 lb/hp v 62 for the Dinarg. A '67 Beetle engine IIRC had 53hp so more like 34lb/hp. The Subaru, assuming the 25 hp engine, had around 36lb/hp so overlapping with Beetles. Earlier Subaru’s had less power, but so did earlier Beetles.
The Beetle was more of a real car than either in being capable of normal highway speeds grade allowing, and pretty normal in size. But it wasn’t a lot more loaded up with power than many contemporary mini-cars.
Going further back the embodiment of ‘normal car’ in its time, the Model T, had 20hp pushing 1200#, 60lb/hp.
back when Subaru started building boxer (flat) engines, they’d stow the spare tire underhood on top of the engine.
I have to say, Bullitt, that your old car belies your username.
Dennis
A friend of mine has an early rusted out Dodge Colt, and in order to make it up Barter’s Hill in St. John’s., I had to get out and walk beside the car. Sorry, that’s the best anecdote Ive got.
wasn’t there a car called a deaux chevau? (aka the most insubstantial car ever made) I know I’m misspelling it but I’m told k-mart budget lawn mowers had more hp …
Yes, the Citroën 2CV (image) nicknamed the ugly duckling but nowadays its quirky looks are kind of cute. I see one on the roads every once in a while, and recently I spotted the Truckette version out on the road. It was blue, like this one. Quirky indeed!
ETA: from Wikipedia it’s spelled deux chevaux, so you were very close.
True, with that old dog of a diesel Vanagon! But, I also used to own a 1970 Chevelle SS396. And, I’ve also driven that on the San Francisco streets of the movie’s famous chase scene, including up and over Guadalupe Canyon Parkway. Better?
Here (map) is where that famous chase scene ended, at this turn at the end of the road where there used to be a gas station. That gas station is long gone.
I learned to drive in a '79 Rabbit diesel with a stick. Dad never told me about this! 
Downshifting an '82 diesel Vanagon only results in more noise. Not more speed.
OMG, add me to “what an adorable car!” list.
And here I was convinced that my '76 Ford Courier was the slowest car on Earth (granted, it was running on two cylinders).
You ain’t had nuthin’ 'till you’ve driven a Reliant Rialto
The original Citroën 2CV had a 9-horsepower engine. In 1955 it was upgraded to a 12.5, capable of 50 mph top speed.
Good Lord, my cars are 280+- up! Can you imagine driving a 12-hp car then driving a modern car for the first time?!
Anybody know what the fastest stock car of the same era was?
My 2015 Buick Regal Turbo has 256hp and 295 lb/ft and weighs 3800lbs-ish. It goes 0-60 in roughly 5.7 seconds and through the quarter at about 14 flat. It’s underpowered.
No problem, back to the same reference books:
In 1967 the fastest car in the world was the Lamborghini P400 Miura at 186.4 mph. The fastest American car was the Corvette 427, 435hp at 162 mph. The fastest little car was the Fiat Abarth OT 2000 at 167.8 mph. I always loved the OT 2000 as the spare tire stuck out the front of the car and was the front bumper.
In 1969 the fastest car was still the Miura, still at 186.4 mph. The fastest American car was still the 'Vette. The fastest small car honors went to the Alfa Romeo 33 Coupe at 161.6 mph. It looked like a Ferrari but only had a 2 liter engine.
Notice how the small engine screamers are always Italian?
For the record, the slowest American cars for those 2 years was the Kaiser Jeep at 78 mph, faster than over 120 of the slowest foreign cars.
Dennis
got to make a distinction between “fast” (high top speed) and “quick” (high acceleration.) American muscle cars were “quick” because they had big engines with lots of torque and would accelerate as quickly as the car’s tires would let them. European exotics were “fast” because they had smaller engines which revved to the stratosphere and made power at high speeds.
My first car was an '87 Plymouth Duster with all of 84 hp. 'course, it only had 2,300 lbs to lug around. Slowest modern car I’ve driven is the newer Ford Ka with 69 hp to lug around the same 2,300 lbs.
Growing up in Europe post baby boom, I heard these referred to as “cigarette rollers.” my dad said they resemble cigarette rolling machines of the post WWII era.
This reminds me of a time in High School French class. For some reason the 2CV came up, I think the textbook mentioned them. The teacher said that CV was the French abbreviation for horsepower. I assumed that that was the actual horsepower of its engine and my reaction, and I made this out loud, was something like “there’s lawn mowers with more horsepower than that”. Note this was in 1970 when pretty much all mowers were the stand up and push kind; there were sitting mowers then, but very rare.
The teacher was not especially knowlegable about cars, so she was apparently unaware of this. Or at least she didn’t have anything to say in reply to my comment.