A cool little Gawker Media company called Jalopnik (which translates roughly into “car nerds”), dropped their coverage of the 2007 Frankfurt Auto Show. If you are a fan of scooters and microcars, you would have had very little to get excited about from a numbers standpoint. The closest thing to a scooter they had was a Skoda (not at all a scooter) and the Peugeot Flux (the spacey 2-seater seen below also not at all a scooter) then…
We move to the microcars, of which there were only 3 that I could find.
One is this, the Toyota IQ concept. Her style hasn’t completely grown on me yet. Coming it at a mere 9.8 feet long, it’s still a whole foot longer than the SMART which allows it to outdo the SMART in passenger space with what they call 3+1 seating (room for 3 adults and 1 child). The IQ also got a heavy-handed swat from the technology gods allowing for a lot of multi-function bits (like the dashboard) and ultra-compact items (like the heating & air system). Who knows for certain if we’ll ever see these things on the road (rumors say Summer of 2008), but I just think it would be cool to hotrod one so I could tell people “I found a way to boost my IQ”. (sorry, jokes a bit rusty tonight).
Anyway, on to the next Micro. This is the SMART Brabus Ultimate 112. I like how Jalopnik describes it:
Touted as a true city sports car by the Smarts, the diminutive urban block carver features a searing orange paint job and cabrio top that folds away in seconds. The rest of the roof stows away in a back drawer. The 110 horsepower turbo mill delivers max torque of 111 foot pounds of torque when kept in 2800 to 4200 rpm range by the Brabus sport steering wheel mounted paddle shifter. The spokesmodels had no comment on if a miniature screaming chicken decal would become available.
It’s hot, IMHO, even if it’s 0-60mph in 9 seconds.
Last up with this naughty little microcar from VW…
This is the VW UP! concept. Doesn’t it look mischievous here? Like it’s about to burn down your house. I don’t know that it really even qualifies as a micro, sliding in at just over 10 feet in length… it’s still shorter than a Honda Fit (13 ft). Really, there wasn’t a lot of small rides in the house. Yes I was surprised. From the photos I saw, it looked more like the Dubai show… Lots of big budget bling mobiles on the floor. Oh well, there ya have it. Let’s hope we see something better from the other shows in the coming weeks.
17. September 2007 at 11:03 pm
Having asked for my 99 bucks back from smart (“you’ll get a check in 7-8 weeks”), I find the VW Up! a much more attractive option. The euro car media report the Up! is one of many vehicles that will be based on the same platform. Interesting is the rear-mounted 2-cyl engine (more interesting is a 1-cyl for emerging markets), and a shortened 2-seater aimed directly at smart is reportedly very likely.
__Orin
Scootin’ Old Skool