MICROCAR NEWS Online

Peter Brock, who is known for designing the original Split Window Corvette that later became the StingRay is not so well known for designing a Microcar for GM as a competitor to the BMW Isetta.

At 19, he was the youngest designer ever hired by GM Styling but he thought GM was missing something in their lineup;  A small car.  At the time GM had nothing and Brock thought there was a market for “young guys like me” who were going to school and could not afford big cars.  His ideas intrigued Harley Earle enough that Earle started a project to address the “student market” and assigned Brock to head it.

The result was the GM CADET.

The story behind this is documented on Brock’s website with this one paragraph in particular that really speaks volumes about the attitude of the day:

Earle was so excited about the Cadet he planned to showcase the car to all of GMs upper level executives and dealers at Styling’s annual internal VIP car show.  At the show’s end, after attendees had survived hours of blinding chrome on the new 1958 GM line-up, the lights went low as other cars were cleared away, and then they came back up on this beautiful little jewel of a $1000 car, slowly spinning on a turntable… the Cadet.  The audience fell silent.  It was about a third the size of anything they’d seen all day. No one knew what to say… they sat in stunned silence!  The only chrome on it resided on slender door handles.  After a few moments, the president of GM, Harlow Curtice, stood and formally announced: “GM doesn’t make small cars”.  The lights went out and the car was never mentioned again.

Read the full story at Brock Racing Enterprises.

thanks to Rob Maselko for the heads up on this…

photo: Jim Parker, The Post and Courier

Club Member Connor McCann from SC recently made the hometown news in an article about his rescue of a BMW Isetta.   The article appears in the online edition of the SC Post & Courier’s CHARLESTON.NET

It is a nice little general interest piece, unfortunately “rescuing” the Isetta was a bit more involved and colorful than the story makes it out to be.  Connor’s own version is much more exciting, involving Surveillance Cameras, Drug Addiction and JAIL!
(all part of the previous owner…not Connor).  
I guess that is not what people want to read about in the Charleston SC newspapers… who knew?

Of course I can’t get Connor to let me reprint his version of the story here either. So….

Read the Charleston Article Here

 In another world; Microcar Collectors and Enthusiasts have their own community.

Like Airplane Enthusiasts that can be part of a community that has a Runway as the main drag so you can park your Plane in the garage, taxi out and take off, the Microcar Community has homes with Garages as the centerpiece of the house and sleeping quarters upstairs or out back.

Vehicles that can exceed 55 mph are banned and tickets are regularly given out for vehicles that are not going slow enough or emitting enough blue smoke.

Every home has a microcar enthusiast in it.  They may own a microcar, they may own several or they may WANT to own one.  Many have tools to work on their cars, some have no tools or no mechanical expertise to do so.

But the neighborhood is friendly and what good is a friend if you cannot borrow their tools?

So a great swap goes on continuously, the same tools are loaned out to neighbors again and again, no one has to own every single special tool needed, they can just go next door or down the block and BORROW it.  As long as it is returned in a reasonable period of time, everything works out well. (more…)