Models

Microcar

The Microcar company is owned by Beneteau, the French boat manufacturers, and the main selling point of these quadricycles (the Microcar is classed as a four-wheel motorbike) is that they can be driven with a motorcycle license. Indeed, a sixteen-year-old entitled to Mobility Allowance is legally able to drive one. Thanks to the license regulations the Microcar is becoming the first vehicle of hordes of teenagers all over Europe, thanks in part to parents who don’t want their precious ones putting around on mopeds if they can be sheathed in a metal shell instead.

The Microcar certainly has many good points to recommend it. At only 2.8 metres long and 1.7 metres wide, parking is an absolute doddle and you’ll fit in gaps you previously thought impossible. The Microcar is also impressively frugal with the old gasoline, comfortably returning 65 miles per gallon.

On the other hand, because the Microcar has to maintain a smaller engine to take advantage of the driving license laws, it doesn’t have much poke. Though it’s not what you’d call embarrassingly slow, it takes 12 seconds to reach 50 miles an hour and top speed is a hair’s breadth over 70. This isn’t a car to travel more than a couple of junctions on the motorway with.

Let’s face facts though. The Microcar isn’t a poser’s car. It fits a gap for teens to get their first motor, or for adults who want a small city runabout to park in the gaps. Perhaps at £7,000-odd it is a bit overpriced, but they do manage to produce about 1,000 of these per month and the Microcar accounts for a third of the total quadricycles market, so we don’t see these types of vehicle disappearing anytime soon. Perhaps its time to see what a true urban vehicle should be like?