Ray Otto has a jumbo-sized affinity for tiny little cars. He’s got a bunch of the little rascals — 14 at the moment.

He has three Nash Metropolitans at last count. But his real claim to fame in the microcar world is his fleet of rare NSU Prinz models. He’s got 11 of those.

Otto never planned on being known as the “NSU Prinz” guy, but he has certainly become visible in micro car circles for both his knowledge and his collection, and also for the parts that he has distributed to help other NSU Prinz owners.

“I’ve been lucky, almost every car I’ve purchased has had some extra parts with it,” he chuckles. “I was kind of the go-to guy for parts and stuff and I shipped a lot of stuff to Canada and all over the U.S. to keep them going. You can only use so much stuff yourself, so you gotta spread it around.”

“Yeah, I know a lot about ’em, but there are people out there that know more than I do!”

Otto, a resident of Foley, Minn., certainly used all his knowhow and resources to restore one of his favorites — a red 1960 Sport Prinz that he likes to show off at big car gatherings like the Iola Car Show in Wisconsin, where he had it on display last summer.

“I got my first [NSU Prinz] at a farm auction. I kind of thought I knew cars and there was a German Prinz automobile for sale, and $85 later owned a car I know nothing about…. That was probably 15 , 17 years ago… Then this one came up in Pewaukee, Wis. A guy had this and a coupe, and I wanted to buy both of them. They were together.”

The affable Otto fully expected to rebuild the non-running Sport Prinz, get it humming and looking good and eventually have some real fun with it. The trouble was it needed a lot of work — the engine was frozen for starters. Then he wound up having to beat cancer, which further delayed some of his microcar activities. Finally, when he started to regain his health, he got serious about getting his little red baby back on the road.

“This one the original owner bought in 1960, and in 1961 he seized the engine up on it,” he recalled. “So it went into a warehouse and went through a series of owners and warehouses. The seats were stolen and it was in really rough shape. We bought it and I cut the whole back end engine area out of it. I was going to put a 3-cylinder Geo Metro engine into it, but it became too [complicated]…

“So I pushed it into a corner and left it. It sat for a number of years, but after I was done with my chemotherapy from cancer, I said ‘If we don’t get this car going now, we never will.’ So I proceeded to weld everything back into the car that I had taken out, and took an engine out of one of my parts cars and put it together. It’s been going like this for probably 10 or 11 years now.”

FROM TWO WHEELS TO FOUR

Building automobiles most certainly was not in the plans when Christian Schmidt and Heinrich Stoll founded their NSU Werke operation back in 1873. Their main goal at the time was manufacturing sewing machines. The company settled in Neckarsulm in Lower Swabia in 1880 and eventually went into the bicycle building business. The name officially became NSU in 1892, and it was about that time the company began assembling motorcycles — a venture that lasted into the 1960s.

The company unveiled its first car, a luxury model built under license from the Belgian Pipe Co., in 1905, then began offering its own smaller models through the 1920s. In 1934, Ferdinand Porsche developed three prototypes of his “People’s Car” vision and reached a deal with NSU to be involved, but NSU eventually backed out of the arrangement and instead returned its focus to motorcycles and scooters.

In 1957, the company returned to the automobile business with a new two-cylinder Prinz econocar. Only 29 of the two-door sedans were reportedly sold in the United States in the model’s 1958 debut year. The tiny NSUs had a back seat and room — albeit very cozy — for four passengers. The 35.6cc vertical twin-cylinder four-stroke engine was mounted transversally at the back and produced 26 hp. The engine had twin ignition coils and a Dynastart starter/generator, unit while the chassis rode on four-wheel independent suspension. The chassis had only two lubrication points. The motorcycle-style four-speed gearbox used constant-mesh gears for “easy and silent gear change,” according to the company, and operated with a single-plate clutch. Curved rear glass permitted broad visibility. Luggage and the spare tire fit into the front storage compartment. Standard equipment included a fresh-air heating/ventilation system.

The cars carried a base price of $1,383 in the U.S. and weighed in at a feathery 1,080 lbs.

In 1959, the company added a Sport Prinz coupe model with a more powerful (36-hp) engine that gave the cars a claimed top speed of 65 mph. The Nuccio Bertone styling was much different than that of the sedans and featured a fastback profile with tailfins, a raked wraparound windshield and back window, triangular rear quarter windows and wind-down windows. Standard equipment included a heater/defroster; locking glove compartment and ashtrays; and provisions for radios. The engine, four-speed gear box and differential made up a single unit, with a backward-hinged engine cover at the rear.

Distribution in the U.S. rose to a reported 3,247 for all models in ’59 before dropping slightly to 2,493 in 1960 — the same year the company began offering a Prinz 30 model sedan that had the peppier 36-hp power plant.

NSU was reasonably successful with its microcars in the U.S. and elsewhere until the mid-1960s, when it made the ill-fated decision to switch from motorcycle-like two-cylinder engines to Wankel rotary engines, which it put in its new Spider model. The change had disastrous results, as the rotary engines with plagued by problems, got poor gas mileage and ultimately got the company tied up in too many warranty claims. In 1969, NSU merged with Auto Union and eventually disappeared for good in 1977.

ANOTHER SMALL VICTORY

One of the joys of microcar ownership is often trying to figure out how to make things work with limited parts availability. Owners often figure out how to adapt things like brakes, tail lights and even drive trains from other manufacturers when authentic replacement parts — usually from donor cars — are not available. Otto has many such stories. Fortunately, he enjoys the challenges and has plenty of experience solving such problems.

The biggest challenge he faced with his broken-down ’60 Sport Prinz was getting an engine into it that would run. The rest was pretty much straight-forward restoration work — paint, bodywork and upholstery.

“The engine was in parts. He had seized the engine up. It’s an air-cooled engine, and Americans don’t know how to drive air-cooled engines,”Otto says. “You have to keep the RPMs up to keep the air going through it. The engine and transmission are a combination unit and it takes a quart-and-a-half of oil, so just by inherent design they drip oil a little bit and if you don’t keep track of it they’ll seize up. So this one was seized up at under 14,000 miles. So I took [an engine] out of another parts car that I had purchased. It’s not the original engine from this one, but it’s comparable.”

Otto did the bodywork, paint and all the assembly and troubleshooting himself, but he is quick to credit his wife Joan for the lovely upholstery work.

“My wife did the interior on her Singer sewing machine at home. She’s my sidekick,” he says. “The problem is there is zero parts availability. The taillights are reproduced in Brazil … The hubcaps are made in Argentina. I modified a Volkswagen Beetle headliner to work in this one. We had the chrome done at a professional shop, but otherwise I painted it and did the bodywork. It was pretty much rust-free except for one rocker panel that had rusted out.”

“Some liberties have been taken. The seats are from a Sports Prinz, but I kind of jockeyed the patterns … The master cylinder for the brakes is the same as a BMW Isetta, but this master cylinder is actually from a Volkswagen Beetle. On the Sports they didn’t really have much for options. On the sedans they had a few things with the chrome on the front bumpers with the turn signals and stuff like that, but for the Sport Prinzes there wasn’t much. There was a little scale you could use to weigh your luggage so you knew how much weight you were putting in the front of the car. But as far as actual stuff to go on the car, there wasn’t much that went on it.”

Otto has been driving Prinzes for so long that he’s getting pretty good at it. He isn’t ready to take off on any coast-to-coast journeys in one, but he’s pretty happy to tool around the streets and country roads near his home. The driving experience might best be described as “unrefined”, but Otto kind of likes it that way.

“It can be a real handful. We are from central Minnesota, and a lot of the country roads have wheel tracks from modern cars — wider than this,” he notes. “So with bias-ply tires and the wheel tracks, you can wind up wandering a little bit. But you’re only going about 50 mph. It will go 60, but it likes 50 better. So you are never in real danger. It’s noisy and hot and loud. It’s German engineering ‘quote-unquote’ and its finest. [laughs].”

Otto says only about 200 of the Sport Prinzes were believed to have been sold in the U.S., and he’s not sure how many might still be around. He knows of only “maybe two dozen that were running.”

“I don’t like the word rare … but it’s unusual. Just the uniqueness, is what I like. I sort of walk to the beat of a different drummer, you know. I would never knock anybody’s Mustang, Camaro or Chevelle. It’s a car they love. But I just could never get into ‘em. I never had an opportunity when I was young to get into ‘em. We drove rusted-out ’59 Fords and stuff like that, and I just like having something different and I love the education part of it and showing it and telling people about it.”

“And the only time I part next to one is at home!”

SHOW US YOUR WHEELS!

If you’ve got an old car you love, we want to hear about it. Email us at oldcars@aimmedia.com

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It took Mark Harrell quite a while to figure out exactly what kind of four-wheeled automotive treasure his dad dragged home one day back in 1968.

About 45 years, in fact.

David Harrell was an over-the-road truck driver who like to tinker with mechanical stuff when he was home. After a long trip to Texas back in ’68, he came home and told his family he had a surprise in the back of his semi-trailer. The senior Harrell had found a weird-looking little French car for sale along the road in Texas and decided it needed to come home with him to Wisconsin.

The beat-up white 1961 Renault 4CV actually changed hands a couple times within the Harrell clan over the years before Mark got his turn with the car. 

“It sat for a long time, yeah,” recalls Harrell, a resident of Marshfield Wis. “ I finally asked my dad one time what he was going to do with the car, and he says, ‘Why, do you want it?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, what do you want for it?’ He said $400 — that’s what he originally paid for it. It had sat in his garage for the longest time. My oldest brother [Mike] actually got it from my dad for $400 and he had it for a while, then sold it back to my dad for 400 bucks. And my other brother [Danny] worked on it for a while, too. So 400 bucks was going back and forth between two of my brothers and my dad and me.

“We knew it was a Renault, and that was about it,” Mark laughs. “My dad liked working on engines and stuff, and he just thought it was cool. He didn’t know what it was, no. And I didn’t either – not until I retired out of the Army in 2013 and we decided to find out what it was.”

The family might have treated the little Renault a little differently over the years if it had known exactly how unique the car is. It turned out the car was probably one of the rarest little buggies Renault had ever produced: A 1961 C4V Resort Special. It’s one of 50 such critters that were built for a resort complex than never materialized in Florida, and one of just 12 survivors that have been accounted for.

Harrell still shakes his head in disbelief when he recounts finding out how rare and unique the car is.

“Once we put some feelers out there online we had a lot of people coming back from California and Florida and other places telling us, ‘Even in the condition it’s in, don’t get rid of it! You can sell it like that, or restore it if you can. It’s a very rare car!’ Once we found out what it was, we figured we can’t let it rust away. We’re gonna save up some money and find somebody reputable to work on it and get it back to the way it was supposed to be. And, of course, we found some pictures of them online, and we thought, ‘Wow, this is really going to be cool if we can get this running again.’”

BORN FOR THE BEACH

One of the more interesting and successful cars ever built by Renault — the 4CV — traces its roots back to one of the worst periods in France’s history: the German occupation during World War II from 1940-44. Partly because his company continued to produce the Juvaquatre automobile after WWII broke out, Louis Renault was arrested by the French government soon after the liberation of Paris by the Allies, accused to collaborating with the Nazis. The Renault company had fallen under German control during the war, and after the Allied invasion, Louis died in in prison in 1944. Pierre Lefaucheaux, who had fought against the Nazi occupation, was then put in charge of the company, and shortly thereafter the firm was nationalized and given the name Regie Nationale des Usines Renault.

While the company was under German control, company brass were given orders to focus only on military and commercial vehicles. Fortunately, there was a plan afoot within company walls to continue work developing a small vehicle that company officials believed would be popular and practical when the war ended. Somehow, the Nazi honchos in charge of overseeing what was happening at the Renault factory did not keep a very close watch on the store, and work on what would become the 4CV continued in secret.

A new protype of the 4CV had actually been tested during the war, and it was destined to lead the Renault lineup of the 1950s. The 4CV first appeared at the Paris Salon in 1946, powered by a rear-mounted 760cc four-cylinder engine that produced 16 hp and featuring four-wheel independent suspension with coil springs. Lockheed hydraulic brakes did the stopping.

Top speed was about 55 mph and the car tipped the scales at just 1,146 lbs., helping it achieve up to 47 mpg.

The 4CVwent on sale in 1947 in Europe and was known in France as “La Quattre Chevaux” (4 hp). Initial prototypes had two doors, but the production cars were four-door models. By 1949, the 4CV was on sale in the United States and known by some as the “Green Renault” because its sole U.S. distributor was the John L. Green company. The 4CV was certainly different than anything on U.S. roadways at the time, with its pudgy appearance and sloping tail. It had rear-hinged “suicide” front doors and sliding windows.

By spring of 1949, Renault was turning out 300 of the tiny four-door sedans each day. By 1952, the 4CV represented one-third of the total production of all French automobiles with more than a quarter million produced. Production continued until 1961, with a slightly smaller 757cc engine used from 1951 onward. A small number were assembled in England, and also in Japan under license.

Certainly one of the rarest — and most collectible today — 4CVs ever built were the memorable and obscure 1961 Jolly Resort Specials. Italian coachbuilder Ghia had done a number of open-air (no doors, windows or enclosed top) Jolly conversions on Fiat 500 and 600 chassis, and Renault opted to do the same with its 4CV for an order of 50 cars for a planned Florida resort. The cars came in either white, a pale blue or coral color, and all had weather-resistant wicker seats and removable surrey tops.

The order of beach cars materialized, but the planned resort never did. They were unwanted orphans right from the start.

“The cars were just sitting around, and a few got distributed,” Harrell said. “We know there is one in Australia and we know there are a few back in Europe and a few in the United States. According to all the Renault enthusiasts and guys who know the history, out of those 50 they can only account for 12.”

HAVING A JOLLY TIME

Where his Jolly had been and what kind of life it had led before it wound up in his father’s semi truck is still a bit of a mystery for Harrell. As far as he can tell, his dad was the second owner of the Renault. How the first owner wound up with the car is anybody’s guess at this point.

“The guy in Texas probably got it in like ’62 or so… The car doesn’t lean into corners. It doesn’t have torsion bars, so it doesn’t corner, and I think he flipped it. So he didn’t want the car and there was damage on the driver’s side, I think. Anyway, I think my dad was probably only the second owner of it and then it was in our family that whole time. It had 9,000 miles on it when I got it… It was originally white. It did run a little bit when he [first brought it home], but there was some damage to it.”

“Everything was wrong with it when I got it. My one brother decided to take the whole engine apart and work on the engine. Then the other one had done a bunch of Bond-O on it. It was a mess by the time I got it. It been stored on a farm at my father-in-law’s … I’m surprised it didn’t rust away because it was stored on gravel the whole time. We were very lucky that there was minimal rust on the whole thing.”

Harrell eventually turned to a nearby restorer, John Draxler, owner of Nostalgic Auto Crafters in Hewitt, Wis., to turn back the clock on the Renault. There were plenty of stops and starts, parts chasing and hurdles to climb over during the three years Draxler worked on the car. Eventually, the project turned into the quintessential “every nut and bolt” restoration: chassis, drivetrain, body and interior.

“The engine parts were easy to find because when they built this they put a Dauphine engine in it, and Renault built a lot of Dauphines. And they didn’t want to redesign an engine just for an order of 50,” Harrell pointed out. “The little things on the body were the hardest to find — the tail lights, the bumpers, the side mirrors … Everything on the outside was tough to find. We were very lucky that the signal lights on the front were glass, and you can’t find them anywhere, but we had them, thankfully. They were in a box of parts that my brother had. We were fortunate on some stuff.”

Rebuilding the wicker seats turned out to be a combined effort between the couple’s son Brian and a wicker artisan in North Carolina.

“Brian is a welder and fabricator so he fabricated front seats for us and we’d go over to the shop where it was being worked on and we built up boards or a milk crate and figure out how high we had to make it,” Mark noted. “Then he took the back seat and put the same design on it. We took a piece of the old backseat along with all the frame work and we sent it to North Carolina. We found a person there that would wicker it. It’s not easy to find somebody to do that kind of work.”

One of the big decisions Mark and his wife Dorothy faced was what color to paint the Renault. A fresh coat of white would have returned the car to its original look, but the pair decided on something a little more eye-catching: a two-tone blue and white.

“We wanted sometime to really make it shine, really make it pop,” he said. “The blue is Laguna Blue, which is perfect because it’s a beach car. We saw that color on a Corvette at a car show. The gentleman actually had the color code, which is all I really needed.

“The Arctic White is actually whiter than white. …We really like the way it turned out. The chrome really looks good on it, and the contrast between the two colors looks good.”

Harrell made two modifications to the car’s electrical system for the sake of safety and reliability. He installed a push-button starter and a safety knife switch on the battery to turn off the battery power.

 “[The battery] loses juice, for whatever reason, and I was actually able to find the same type of coil, but it’s got like a little booster. That helps. And we put a little heavier type of wire in it… It’s temperamental, being a 6-volt system. I’ve got a little breaker on the battery because for some reason the 6-volt system likes to trickle out the juice. I’ve talked to guys who said to put that little breaker on that goes across the battery post and we disconnect it.”

The switch on the battery also makes the Jolly a little less flammable, Harrell says.

 “The gas tank is about 10 gallons … and one of the worst designs ever. They put it right above the battery. With gas, you’ve always got the fumes, and you’ve spark right there. We’re thinking some of those 50 probably burned to the ground and that’s maybe part of why only 12 are left. When I fill it up I’ve got a little 1-gallon can and I disconnect the battery.”

Harrell joked that the scary gas tank location isn’t the only reason operating the Resort Special can be a little on the adventurous side. There are no doors to lean on or grab onto, no protection from mother nature, no seat belts to keep you planted in the wicker seats, and minimal cornering agility. Even the foot pedals are a bit of challenge.

“It’s hard to drive because the brake and gas pedals are so close together,” Harrell says. 

“I think it was made for people with flip-flops or sandals on!”

“People have had these things up to 60 [mph] … Ah, I dunno, it’s a little engine that gets hot. I don’t want to do that. I’m not in a hurry when I drive it. I don’t drive it over about 35 miles an hour. It think it goes up to 40. It’s a small engine, only 850cc. Some of them were like 750, but this one’s an 850, still a four-cylinder 3-speed manual. When the wife and I drive around we always take the top off. The bars just set on a peg in the back and just come right off. It’s just fun to drive around without the top on. [The top] will rattle and the wind catches it. It doesn’t fold down, so you either put it on and leave it on, or take it off. At car shows we always put it on because that’s the way it looked.”

Harrell says the car has mopped at car shows around Wisconsin in the years that he has been showing it. Collecting trophies is fun, but he says what he and Dorothy enjoy most is showing up early for a show and taking their car out on joyrides around the different towns they travel to.

Occasionally, people will mistake the C4V for the similar looking Fiat Jolly. A few recognize it as a Renault. Almost nobody knows it is a long-lost beach car and one of the few survivors of its kind.

“We get heads turning when we drive it through town,” Harrell says. “The back end with the louvers looks like the hood of a Volkswagen. People think we chopped the top off a Volkswagen. And a lot of people think it’s a golf car because of that goofy Surrey top on it. I tell them this would be the most expensive golf car you’ll ever have! [laughs].”

Harrell cringes at the idea of ever parting with his fabulous little Renault. It’s been in the family since he was 8 years old, and finding out how significant the car was and then embarking on a mission to restore it to prime condition has been a very meaningful journey. His father David and brother Mike have both passed on, but he knows they would both be thrilled with how the rags-to-riches story of the 1961 buggy turned out.

“Everybody is always telling us if you ever want to sell it, go to Arizona or Florida to the resort communities because somebody is going to pay dearly to have this thing,” he says. “Some people have suggested I get ahold of some big hotel companies in France — since it’s a French car — so one of them could have it in their lobby, so it will always look nice.”

“If I ever do sell it, I never want to see it again!”

SHOW US YOUR WHEELS!

If you’ve got an old car you love, we want to hear about it. Email us at oldcars@aimmedia.com

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Old Cars was at the Microcar meet this past summer at The Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners. This Bond Bug caught our eye. This isn’t a car you see every day. Check it out!

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Old Cars is turning 50. In honor of 50 years of the privilege of bringing the old cars hobby to our valued and faithful readers, Old Cars will revisit 50 of our past featured cars in 50 days, to commemorate the half-century of Old Cars. Here’s to fifty more years of Old Cars!

 DAY FIFTY: 1959 King Midget

Dick Russ ponied up $2,500 for the remnants of his 1959 Model 3, which is a lot more than any of the King Midgets cost new during their production run from 1946-’69. They were the undisputed “Kings” of the low-budget cars, with one-cylinder engines, two seats, a removable canvas top and not much else.

They were originally the brainchild of Claud Dry and Dale Orcutt, who made it their mission to build the most affordable car on the market. The pair began selling the cars as kits out of Athens, Ohio, in 1946. The kits were basically a pattern for sheet metal (if you wanted any), a steering assembly, suspension parts, and a frame to mount everything on. No engine was included, but if you could find a one-cylinder engine lying around, you were in business.

“In high school I had a friend who had one,” Russ says. “His parents let him have one because they thought he couldn’t get into any trouble with such a little car. I was just fascinated by the car, and I just thought it was neat because it was more than I had!”

Years later, Russ said he stumbled upon a story about the King Midget in a magazine while he was flying to a job interview following college. 

“I saw this article and thought, ‘Boy, that would be fun. I’d really like to have one of those,’ but I was just out of school, and I didn’t have any money.”

 To learn more about Russ’ King Midget <CLICK HERE>

CHECK OUT DAY FORTY-NINE OF 50 CARS IN 50 DAYS, CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF OLD CARS HERE

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Mark Green has a fantastic sense of humor. It didn’t come standard with a Meadows micro car, but the ability to laugh at the world, and yourself, sure comes in handy when you own one.

Green is the proud and happy owner of a 1958 Meadows Friskysport — a VERY small car enjoyed by a very small fraternity of owners. There’s likely only about 75 Friskys in the world, and only 15 known ’58 Sport convertibles like the one Green’s father bought 57 years ago that still remains part of the family. And the guy who sold it to them was a little whacky himself. Literally.

“It was imported into our hometown of Warsaw, Ind., by Stanley ‘Whacky’ Arnold,” laughs Green. “That was his name. He would actually import Bristols, MGs and other cars and sell them in our hometown and also Chicago back in the day.

“My father bought it in 1964. There are only five we know of here in the United States, and there’s only 15 of that style, the convertible, that we know of worldwide. I’ve got a second one of them in the garage at home that I am restoring, so I own 40 percent of them here in the States! [laughs]… My dad traded an Econoline van and cash and the guy gave him this back. He just liked it … I have no clue [what he planned to do with it]. At the time my dad was a manager at KFC, and their building was painted red and white-striped, and the car was painted red and white-striped with the Colonel on the door … I’ve got pictures of it, too. It was the KFC-mobile. That was up on the East Lansing campus, Michigan State.”

Given that so few were produced during an ever-changing production run and unstable company ownership history, it’s no surprise that Friskys in the United States were not easy to keep running. The local NAPA store was a little thin on Friskysport parts, and your best bet to get some mechanical work done was either learn it yourself, of find an adventurous motorcycle mechanic with time on his hands.

And so, while Green and his dad did their best, their little machine spent plenty of time out of commission over the years. “The clutch went out of it back in I’d say the early ‘70s, so it sat until 1980 when I pulled it out of the garage and took the engine out,” Green recalled. “It’s a motorcycle engine, so I tried gluing cork back onto the disc. We got it running for a while. But the float had holes in it, and you can’t find a float for the carburetor because it’s a Villars motorcycle engine built in England. I had it running again for a while, then the clutch went bad again and it basically sat in the garage until the Internet came along and we were able to find more information on what we needed to do to it.”

Green gives much of the credit for the condition of his Frisky these day to John Meadows, the grandson of company founder Henry Meadows. John has become the unofficial custodian of the company’s history and set up the Frisky Register to keep track of the surviving cars and help owners network. 

“He’s got about all the data on them that you could ask for,” Green says. “He sent me stuff on what to make for it and how to build it, and I also made parts and sold them back to him.”

“In 2015 we actually went over to the national microcar rally in England and stayed with [him] and had a great time over there. They treated us like royalty. It was a fun trip.”

A GRAND LITTLE PLAN

The Meadows Frisky could just as easily wound up named the “Flower Frisky” if history had been only slightly different. It was Captain Raymond Flower, a race car driver and head of the Cairo Motor Co. in Egypt, that originally hatched the idea for the car. He had hoped to produce a tiny commuter a car in Egypt, but the pieces never fell into place and Flower eventually turned to Henry Meadows Ltd., a supplier of car and marine engines and parts in the U.K.

A prototype vehicle called “The Bug” was built in 1956 at the Meadows plant. It had room for two, four wheels, a fiberglass body, gull-wing doors and a two-cylinder 250cc Villars motorcycle engine. The car was chain-driven and featured a narrow stance in the back end and Dynastart reversing system “where you shut the engine off, push the key in and there is a reversing solenoid that will change the power from one set of points and coils to the other side so it will run backwards and go in reverse,” explained Green.

The Vignale coachbuilding company of Turin, Italy, was tabbed to produce the bodies for the cars, but before they could ever deliver anything more than a pair of test bodies a major design switch scrapped the gull-wing doors in favor of rear-opening (i.e. “suicide”) traditionally hinged doors.

The whole corporate backstory gets a little hazy and complicated from there. In 1957, Henry Meadlows Ltd. was the official parent company of the Frisky brand, but a year later the Flower Group headed by Raymond Flower acquired controlling interest. A year after that, Henry Meadows was bought out by the Marsten Group of companies and the brand was renamed Frisky Cars Ltd. That same year a hardtop coupe was added to the Friskysport convertible and two other models, the Family Three and Frisky Sprint, were also announced. The Family Three was similar to the existing two models, but with just a single wheel in back. The Friskysprint was planned as a lightweight racing/sports car that could top 90 mph. Alas, nothing more than a prototype of the Sprint ever materialized.

The ownership juggling act continued in 1959 when another owner, C.J. Wright, took over operations. The change coincided with the debut of the Frisky Family Three Mk2 model, followed by the Frisky Prince, another three-wheel model. By 1960, the Frisky brand had seemingly used up all its lives and disappeared for good, but not before it blessed the collector car hobby with a small fleet of tiny machines that have found a loyal following of fans.

The Friskysport that wound up in the Greens’ driveway was one of a small number of left-hand-drive cars that were imported into the U.S. It carried a 324cc, two-cylinder, two-cycle engine with a steel tubular chassis and roller chain transmission. The cars were reportedly capable of squeezing 60 miles out of a gallon of gas and could hit 65 mph if the driver kept his foot to the floor long enough. A vinyl top provided minimal protection from the elements.

Not surprisingly, the Friskys never caught on in the U.S. They had their share of design and execution flaws — including a fuel tank corrosion problem. Mostly, though, they were just the wrong car at the wrong time for the U.S. market. Americans were not thirsting for tiny three-wheeled motorcycle-type vehicles when there were rivers of chrome, high-rise tail fins and big, powerful V-8 engines to be had.

ONE OF THE “FAB 5”

Green knew his ’58 Friskysport was probably pretty rare, but didn’t really know how unusual it was until he began corresponding with John Meadows. So far, it’s one of only five such vehicles that have surfaced in the U.S. Since the entire production total for all years of the Frisky brand was probably only somewhere in the neighborhood of 750, any of them are rare orphans these days.

“They actually built these cars for the U.S. market before they built them for their own market — to make money,” Green says. “This is one of the early ones they built … It has the turn signals on the side of the car, behind the doors … This one actually came with clear plexi material (windows}, and they just slid down into two posts, where the ones in England actually have two Plexiglas sliders. And that tail section there will unbolt from the rest of the body. This one was actually made in two pieces, where most of the others are a single solid body. That’s what my 1960 is, a solid body.”

Green faced plenty of challenges finding and/or building all the parts he needed to do the repairing and restoring that his car needed to keep it on the road. Fortunately, he’s a pretty resourceful guy and he’s met plenty of like-minded fellow enthusiasts during his micro-car endeavors.

“I know where all 35 of [the Friskys] are in the United States,” he jokes. “I pretty much know where all the Sports are. I work in a machine shop and I made parts and helped other people get their cars back on the road, and in return they helped me get mine on the road.”

“For example, the brakes are Morris Minor. You can’t buy the brake products. But the Morris Minor brakes will work. You can still get tail lights. They are not the right ones, but you can get the lenses. And just the rubber parts you can’t get, because nobody makes them. So I fabricated some molds and found people that would actually make them for me.”

Green has been able to keep the original two-cylinder power plant rolling all these years — “18 British horsepower! A lot of lawn mowers have more than that!” he jokes. Going for a spin, with or without a passenger to share the ultra-cozy front bench seat, is never short on adventure. Green actually reaches under and around his right leg to shift four-on-the-floor, and the top of his head reaches up above the windshield.

“The suspension is very rough. It’s got two shocks in the back. The front suspension, the best way to describe it is the old torsion [setup] like on a trailer, that’s basically what it is. When you hit the bakes on this car, instead of dropping, it will raise. That’s just the way it was designed,” he notes. “They say they’ll do 60 mph, but I won’t. Over [in England’ I drove in a road rally for 40 miles and it actually wasn’t bad.”

“There’s not much else to them. I guess over there you could get a radio in it, but you couldn’t hear it anyway [laughs].”

If the profile of the car looks a little familiar, it definitely is a mini-doppelganger to a much more well known small machine, the Amphicar. “Yeah, a lot of people will think it’s an Amphicar. They’ll look around back and ask if I’m going to put a prop on it and I say, “[Darn], if fell off again!’”

Green’s car has some custom made hupcaps he says he picked up from a guy in Scotland.

 “This would have had like baby moons,” he notes. Otherwise, there is not much on the car that has changed over the years. Green says eventually he plans to take the body off and do some work on the doors. “You can see the body gap between the doors and the front fender. That needs to be fiberglassed back up to support it. Over the years with the weight of the windshield has sort of drooped. My dad and I were going to do it, but he passed away … I just haven’t had the time. I’m not retired yet.”

Green says he has no other big plans for the tiny Meadows, other than taking it to shows so other car fans can see it and learn the car’s unique story, and taking it for occasional spins around town or just around the block. It’s almost a certainty that Green won’t be parting with the car anytime soon. It has become part of his identity and certainly given him some status in microcar circles — not to mention countless hours of enjoyment.

“It’s just a fun car,” he says. “Since it’s been in the family for so many years, it just has a special place. And my grandson has already claimed it.”

SHOW US YOUR WHEELS!

If you’ve got an old car you love, we want to hear about it. Email us at oldcars@aimmedia.com

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We want to be the only ones in our neighborhood with a 73-year-old blue mini station wagon.

This Crosley wagon, for the low-low price of just $4,950, will fill the bill nicely!

We spotted this one in our own Old Cars Marketplace. She lives in Hallock, Minn.

https://marketplace.oldcarsweekly.com/classified/1948-crosley-station-wagon-listing-1573.aspx

“Older restoration. All mech items rebuilt, engine, transmission & rear-end. Have large quantity of spare parts including 2 engines, 2 transmissions plus generators, carbs, new gaskets and many more.”

It would take some work to make it look its best, but we’d love to have a shot at!

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Chicago, IL  – Long time Microcar enthusiasts, Larry Claypool (Chicago) and Jeff Lane (Nashville) announced the creation of the newly-formed MicroMini Car Club to be able to share their interest and enthusiasm for cleverly engineered and constructed, uniquely small, personal transportation vehicles. The Club’s mission statement is: Preserve the interest, use, repair and collecting of diminutive vehicles. Club members will be sharing their love of Micro cars (less than 500cc) & Mini cars (501cc to 1000cc) at regional and national microcar shows across America. The car’s distinctive, iconic shapes bring more smiles per mile when they are seen driving. Names like Isetta & Messerschmitt were the product of WWII “survivor innovation” from left-over war materials, coupling small moped or scooter motors to power enclosed bubbles on 3 or 4 wheels. Through the 1960s, cars like the Austin Mini & Fiat 500 became more refined and reliable. Many of these cars will attend the Micro/Mini Car World Meet (https://microcarmeet2021.com/) at The Gilmore Museum, Hickory Corners, MI June 18-19, 2021.

The MicroMini Car Club will produce an online-only Club newsletter with announcements of future shows and events, restoration profiles, how-to articles, classified advertisements for cars & parts, parts wanted, etc. Annual membership is $20.00. Microcar enthusiasts are encouraged to register online at www.microminicarclub.com. Membership benefits include access to the newsletter and classifieds section, which are only available to members. 

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Bidding was pretty slow — only up to $4,600 — the last time we checked on this little beauty at www.bringatrailer.com, but we hope it gets some more love than that! The rear-engined NSU micro-car has been wonderfully restored and comes in glorious Audi Red. It’s a 1,200-lb., air-cooled, four-speed fun machine. Think what a blast you’d have in the local parade or cruise night in this thing! We love it!

We’d Buy That! 1979 Lincoln Continental Mark V

We’d Buy That! 1954 Hudson Hornet

We’d Buy That! 1959 Cadillac Stretch Limousine

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Carefully amassed over 15 years by businessman and dedicated collector Bruce Weiner, the Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum represents the world’s largest collection of the world’s smallest cars. Extremely well-known and respected the world over, the colorful and utterly unique museum reflects Weiner’s lifelong fascination with rarities of mechanical interest. It also reflects a fastidious collecting philosophy; in building the collection, Bruce scoured the world to secure the best, the rarest, and the most unusual examples extant, often dedicating multiple years to the “thrill of the chase” and eventual acquisition of select lots.

Now, after 15 years of welcoming thousands of visitors from across the globe to tour his impressive museum and holding countless microcar meets onsite, Weiner is preparing to disperse his fascinating collection, sharing the joy it has brought him over the years with other passionate collectors. The upcoming two-day sale will see his entire collection cross the podium without reserve, including approximately 200 microcars, along with an eclectic assortment of more than 300 lots of collectibles. The offering includes period neon signage, exceptionally rare kiddie rides, hugely valuable micorcar models, literature, and delightful period vending machines and candy dispensers, all from the 1950s—the heyday of the microcar.

“Bruce Weiner is the consummate collector with an incredible sense of fun and remarkable eye for rarity and quality—elements that are all perfectly reflected in his prized collection,” says Rob Myers, Chairman and Founder, RM Auctions. “As a microcar collection, the Bruce Weiner Museum is unequivocally the finest of its kind worldwide. With many items having been closely guarded in private ownership, and the vast majority coming to public auction for the first time, the sale is truly unprecedented. We are honored to have been selected by Bruce to present his museum collection, and we look forward to welcoming enthusiasts to what promises to be an unbelievably fun and unforgettable weekend.”

Highlighted by a magnificent roster of examples from the late-1940s through the early-1960s, Bruce’s microcar offering has to be seen to be believed. Spanning a broad range of makes and models from around the world, the spectacularly diverse collection comprises every imaginable microcar iteration, body style, engine displacement, color combination, and country of origin. Whether they are highly original, unmolested examples or recipients of exceptional, professional restorations conducted onsite in Bruce’s own shops, each is considered by industry experts to be the “best of the very best,” and in many cases, the only examples made or surviving.

From the smallest car ever built, a 1964 Peel P-50, to the Italian iteration of the Messerschmitt, known as the Mivalino, the only 100 percent original one in the world, the collection quite literally contains everything—every imaginable Biscuter, an assortment of four Goggomobil Transporters, of which few additional examples exist, and such rarities as a 1955 Kleinschnittger F-125 and two Voisin Biscooters, the extraordinary microcar built by legendary French aviation and automotive engineer Gabriel Voisin.

Headlining the offering is the world’s only complete Messerschmitt collection, spanning from a 1953 KR175 prototype to the second to last serial number known to exist. It also includes the only surviving 1961 Messerschmitt KR201 Sport, an incredibly rare 1957 Messerschmitt KR201 Roadster, and a highly desirable ‘Tiger,’ the rarest of all Messerschmitts and the only one finished in this color combination. Deemed the fastest microcar ever built, the ‘Tiger’ is capable of a top speed exceeding 70 mph—a truly impressive feat considering its size. Another lot of particular interest is the 1955 Messerschmitt KR200, formerly owned by American circus personality and entertainer Vic Hyde. This pint-sized treasure was given to Hyde by the factory as the first pre-production example for publicity purposes and specially outfitted to hold his musical instruments.

The incomparable Isetta, with its timeless “bubble car” design, is also well-represented in the Bruce Weiner Museum. Aside from a pair of BMW 600s, the BMW Isetta 300 is presented in every imaginable version, from an original German police car acquired directly from the police chief, to an original “Jagdwagen” (hunting car), the ultra-rare 1957 Isettacarro ‘Pickup Truck,’ and the most desirable of all—an Isetta 300 Bubble-Window Cabriolet. Other delightful bubble cars were built under license in other countries, such as the Velam Isetta of France and the progenitor of them all, the Iso Isetta. In other cases, the bubble car is presented as a marque all its own, such as the Heinkel Kabine. Among a long list of highlights within the group is the 1959 BMW Isetta ‘Whattadrag,’ built by Bruce’s team after being inspired by the famed Hot Wheels model. Powered by a 730 horsepower Chevrolet 502 engine, ‘Whattadrag’ is fully operational and inspired a new run of toy cars by Hot Wheels. (Video: http://bit.ly/PahrcJ)

“To me, it’s all about the thrill of the chase,” Weiner adds. “My collection has brought me incredible joy over the years, but simply finding and restoring these cars is not enough for me. In order to fully appreciate them, I need to share them. I’m really looking forward to the sale and happy that these unique cars will be spread to other passionate collectors throughout the world. As I see it, we’re enlarging the microcar community by letting these go and helping keep history alive.”

For further information and a frequently updated list of entries, visit www.rmauctions.com or call +1 519 352 4575. For a direct link to the Bruce Weiner Museum auction website, visit www.handlewithfun.com.

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