Nice old film, but is it a micro?

[Jonathan Poll]

Hey Guys,

  I've seen this car before,but not the video. Is it classed as a micro? Looks it, but back looks qute ong compared to others.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI1D-Kv0jV0&feature=related

[Jonathan Poll]

And why is this so similar to a goggo?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUIiyOX2sCA&feature=related

It even has the African Face Mask! My dad puts cans of soup in there so its nice and warm for the rallies!

[marcus]

The mikrus is quite well known and is in Julian Nowill's excellent book "eastern European Cars". Deffo a micro in my opinion! It also has possibly the daftest arrangement for a front opening door: side hinged is fine, roof hinged shelters you, bottom hinge lets rain and snow in and makes entering and exiting very awkward, and for those reasons I LIKE it! (Nuts!)

The other one may have been inspired by Goggos, but in reality the layout of the chassis and mechanical components, and the need for cheap tooling often has more bearing on the look of a car than copying another company's design. Look at Kaiser, Hillman, Standard and Fords of that era and they all have quite a similar shape.

[Jonathan Poll]

The mikrus is quite well known and is in Julian Nowill's excellent book "eastern European Cars". Deffo a micro in my opinion! It also has possibly the daftest arrangement for a front opening door: side hinged is fine, roof hinged shelters you, bottom hinge lets rain and snow in and makes entering and exiting very awkward, and for those reasons I LIKE it! (Nuts!)

The other one may have been inspired by Goggos, but in reality the layout of the chassis and mechanical components, and the need for cheap tooling often has more bearing on the look of a car than copying another company's design. Look at Kaiser, Hillman, Standard and Fords of that era and they all have quite a similar shape.

Hmmm. I recognised the first, but not the second car!

I guess quite a lot of cars used the same components. Even the Mini Comtesse uses a schmitt neutral selectorr trigger!

[Big Al]

The Smyk is a rare thing and I have never seen a real one. I actually quite like it. The Mikrus looks quite reasonable but is a great disappointment as though it has a 300cc engine it is heavy and does not perform well. The quality of the steel is low and it is perhaps the worst of the Goggo derivatives if you happen to like cheese, as I do, which means the AWS Piccola/Shopper is acceptable styling. In 250cc form this also suffers from excess weight but with a bit of tweaking, an engine swop and a few mods Mine did 48 miles to work a day in fine form over a winter. The Mikrus would need the 400cc unit and all the problems that brings. Be very interesting to drive a Spanish 350cc and I love Uwe's van.