I’ve heard of these before. Still haven’t seen one:
http://www.corbinmotors.com/sparrow.htm
Electric, legally classed as a motorcycle so it can use the commuter lane, about $15K. Corbin is also planning a V-twin gas-powered commuter vehicle called the Merlin (coming out in 2002).
Though owning an electric vehicle might be problematic in CA for the near term …
In my office, there is some guy that has a nifty little thing - a Nissan HyperMini (http://www.jeva.or.jp/eng/lookf/51.html). The drive is on the right side, though :(.
[slight hijack]
Obviously, this guy somehow got one of these whacked out cars in L.A., and it’s licensed etc. What does it take, aside from physically getting the car here, to legally register/drive it?
[/slight hijack]
I sat in one of these in the L.A. Auto show a couple of years ago. It definitely is not worth $15k. It has a range of about 40 miles, the inside is “sparse,” to put it nicely, and the entire thing felt very chintzy. Plus, with all of those lead-acid batteries, your range will quickly diminish and replacement is a quick way to lighten up your wallet. Of course, it also only holds one person and maybe a bag of groceries. Very impractical by any measure.
Ok, we all know about the differance in prices for petrol and cars beteen the US and Europe.
Is it also safe to presume the following…
America = Long streaches of straight road/higways etc, which would lead to good petrol consumption, Automatic transmision and the need for fast cars.
Europe = Not to many streaches of straight road/higways etc, which would lead to poor petrol consumption (city Driving), manual transmision and the need for echonomical/easy to park city cars.
Of course there is allways Germany with its autobahns, but that would be an exception. Besides they nearly all drive Audis/Bmws/Mercs etc there (lucky Buggers)
There’s this guy around here who still drives a little, boxy electric car he got sometime in the 70s. It doesn’t go over 30 mph but it’s held up real well and everyone who sees it is surprised that it’s still on the road. I wonder how many batteries he’s gone through?
Those French prototype public transportation cars looked like fun. When you opened the back to get in, they had molded plastic seats along the sides of the box-like interior. We used to have some old Willie’s Box Body jeeps around here and they looked cool, having been built shortly after WW2. Sort of like the British Land Rover, complete with the small 6 cylinder engines. They don’t make them anymore but they were 2 wheel drive, surprisingly roomy when you took out the back seat and very utilitarian. We had one for a while. No carpet on the floor, a real basic control panel, the passenger seat came out and under the floor was a tool storage compartment.
It had those big, angular fenders, and those heavy crash bumpers. The closest thing to them today is a Japanese small SUV that looks like a jeep, but has far more luxuries. The new jeeps have so many luxuries crammed into them that they don’t have the room the old box body used to have.
I’m not sure which is better; the American Jeep or the British Land Rover. I’m leaving the Hummer out because even a real basic version costs half of the national debt.
Just about every Europen make was once sold here-Renault, Citroen, Peugeot, Alfa-Romeo, Fiat, Triumph, MG, Rover, etc.
And all of them failed! They failed for many reasons, chief among them:
-poor dealer support (if you had a car that you could not drive, for wat of a $5.00 part, you know what I mean!
-poor reliability-most of the british and french cars had this problem
-eccentric designs: most french cars looked like they were designed by a team of drunks
-por reliability: in the last years that FIATs (Italian) were sold in theUSA, there was a standing joke: FIAT=fix it again tony
All in all, the euros had their chance, and they blew it!
Another reason for the popularity of small cars in the UK is lack of road space. Many people who live in cities don’t have private parking and so want something that can be slotted into a small space in the street.
When I was in the US on holiday, I was amazed by the size of the parking bays in parking lots and on the street: they were at least 50% bigger than the ones in the UK. It is now a requirement in the British driving test that you are able to park the car in a space that is only a little bit bigger than it.
On the point about safety standards, it’s not that the US standards are more stringent, but that they’re sufficiently different from EU standards to constitute a barrier to entry in the US market.
You might be thinking of the BMW C1, which was only launched in Europe a few months ago.
Something Click and Clack once said about French cars - “The French don’t copy anybody and nobody copies the French”. Sums it up nicely, I think.
A family in my old home town had a 1903 Baker Electric which still ran. They got it out for parades and so on. It was a “horseless carriage” and had a tiller. Electrics have been around for a lot longer than many people think, and have always had the same problems - limited range, wimpy power and heavy batteries. Before 1920, they were popular with women, as well as with professionals like doctors who made house calls in those days - classes of drivers who needed an in-town runabout. They were perceived as being easier to operate, more reliable, and some people felt they were safer than running around with a tank of flammable gasoline. In fact, Henry Ford’s wife didn’t trust gasoline engines, and drove a Detroit Electric.
The Peugeot 404 Break, perhaps? Although it isn’t “tiny” by European standards.
Heh. The funny things is that the A3 is a VW Golf. Same floor pan, same engines. Other bodywork, other dash. Better suspension, and thus corners better than the Golf. Still not a “hot” hatch, as it’s known in Europe. Try Peugeot, Alfa Romeo, or Renault for that, these days - in Germany, they’ve forgotten to produce an affordable, fun to drive hatchback. Although the S3 is of course an absolute monster. It costs about USD 50,000 over here though - a bit rich for a shopping cart. 
Some miscellaneous comments:[ul][li]BMW owned Izetta. That’s why someone spotted the old Izetta on a BMW lot.[/li][li]The second generation of the Ford Scorpio was a complete disaster in Europe too. They’ve stopped producing the ugly bastard two years ago, and there are still some models on the factory lot! Why? Look it up and judge for yourself…[/ul][/li]I’ll refrain from commenting on the various insults to French cars, being an avid Peugeot driver myself. One of the few things the French are good at is designing elegant, comfortable, and mostly: sporty! cars. These days, they’re even as reliable as any German car. And anybody that thinks that this car is poorly designed needs to get a head check. Even is the designer was somewhat Italian.
Hmm, crack on sale this week?
I don’t doubt the Porsche has ever been sued, but can find no reference to the groundbreaking suit you mention.
Turbos are NOT ‘designed to engage when downshifted’. The turbos on all Porsche cars engage at certain, predetermined rpm thresholds.
What you may be alluding to is the circumstance where early model Porsche turbos had very little power off boost. When the turbo did kick in it delivered ALOT of power very quickly.
Your BMW statements are equally as troubling. First, ‘the fastest BMW production car ever made’ is without a doubt the new Z8. This car, though made in extremely small numbers, is available in the US.
The ‘hopped-up model of the z3’ is the M Roadster, a car built and sold here in the U.S. since it’s inception.
The Skyline GTR has never been available here for many reasons.
The most significant ones being:
currently only produced in left-hand drive
development costs to federlize the engine to meet U.S. specs
unknown market as the cost would be in excess of $85,000.
Michael
I do know this, it is just that in the US right now VW is using a lot of television advertising to promote the VW GTI as a sports car. In Europe the same car is an slow economy car when compared to its platform sibling, the bad-ass S3, and that was the point I was trying to get across. So it is a good illustration of how we here in the US just get the watered down versions, and not the cool high speed autobahn cars.
I drive a 2 door Audi hatchback, in Europe I think it was called the 90 Coupe(?). Anyways, here it was wildy unpopular and was only sold for 2 years with only about 1700 cars sold before they discontinued it. In Europe they made the same car for almost a decade(I think), and it had sport models with a turbo engine, which of course was never offered in the US.
It was simply called the Coupe here.
Problem was, it looked like a Ford Escort. The styling was definitely uninspiring (well, maybe not to us Audiphiles 
) and the AWD feature that was revolutionary on the Quattro of 10 years prior was available on cars like the Celica All-Trac for much less money (I believe the coupe listed for over $30k in 1990). Not that AWD was a big selling feature back then anyway. And the car’s performance was good, but not great.
It was simply called the Coupe Quattro here.
Problem was, it looked like a Ford Escort. The styling was definitely uninspiring (well, maybe not to us Audiphiles ) and the AWD feature that was revolutionary on the Quattro of 10 years prior was available on cars like the Celica All-Trac for much less money (I believe the coupe listed for over $30k in 1990). Not that AWD was a big selling feature back then anyway. And the car’s performance was good, but not great.
DataMike, buddy, you and I are not getting off on the right foot. In response to your observations:
The case in question is at least twelve years old. You are not going to find it through any free service, and I’m not going to look for it. I believe the verdict came down in 1990. How do I know this? Because I was working for a Porsche dealership at the time. We had a specific instruciton from Porsche America that we not sell any used mid-1980s turbos without getting a release signed by the buyer as a direct result of this case. Take my word for it. I was there.
What happens to the RPMs of an automobile that is downshifted? They increase. The gearbox of the 911 Turbo was designed so that at cruising speed, downshifting from fourth gear to third would boost the RPMs into the optimal turbo range. In other words, the turbo engages upon downshifting.
As far as your comments regarding the Z3, yes, I was mistaken, the M Roadster was for a time the fastest production vehicle in the United States. The M Coupe is the vehicle I was thinking of:
“Like the US-spec M3, the American M-Coupe gets an inferior engine - again is the US-spec M3’s 3152 c.c. in-line 6, with just the inlet-bounded “Vanos” VVT instead of “Double Vanos”. Maximum power is 240hp, although the 236lbft of torque is much closer to the European version’s 258lbft, thus the performance loss in low speed is limited.” –cite
There used to be a lot more individualistic British manufacturers but they were all under the BMC/BL umbrella group which was managed by tossers and sadly is now defunct. The company once did trade internationally and there should be some left outside of the UK, it would be a shame to see them all disappear.
Since people are mentioning their favourite small cars, I’ll mention the Smart car. Another great mini-car that’s not sold in the USA.
Here’s something close to those odd Euorpean cars - The only catch is that you’d have to build them:
I get pretty tired of the selection of American and Americanized cars that we get ‘offered.’ Now they have something out with ‘melted bug slanted’ headlights. They look like crap, but you have no choice. Almost all of the small vans look alike and the Japanese imports aren’t much different in style than American made.
It used to be that a Ford was instantly recognized as being different from a Chevy, which was different from a Chrysler which was different from an International. Now the only radically different car is either some enormously expensive roadster with 1940s fenders, or the boxy, crunched down cab look of a 1950s hot rod. And the VW bug. It’s changed, but it’s still a bug.
Only the kids these days give their cars some flavor, but they have to have a whole lot of cash to do so.
Europeans have some really nice cars, but I figure the American Car makers will fight like heck to keep them out and retain their monopoly. The Japanese had to fight like heck to get in and only got accepted after establishing plants here, subcontracting parts for various American car makers and facing unjust import taxes.
Now, there are a few English Rolls Royce’s around, most belonging to the filthy rich though some old ones have been restored by enthusiasts and are on the road.
Heck, I was surprised to find that the old Rolls had built in wheel jacks that lowered from the frame when you needed to change a tire and one type used the so-called ‘American invented’ single racing wheel lug to hold the tire on. These on a car decades before anything even like it showed up here. Now, only huge motor homes have the built in jacks and race cars use the lugs.
After spending many a messy time dragging out assorted cumbersome jacks that fit on the bumper, slots in the frame, slots in the bumper or on the underside, I’d love to have built in jacks! (Though, I did use a bumper jack twice to lift the rear end of my car out of a ditch.)
It’d be nice to have a car small enough to lift out of a ditch! I’ve watched a couple of programs showing a couple of European guys just lifting the back end of their tiny car out of the mud or a ditch and one even holding up one side as his buddy changed a tire!
Here’s another electric car available in the US, but it’s really nothing more than a fancy golf cart.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=556450085
