| Lightning strikes |
 Can a small electric city car come in an attractive shape? Not if you let the big manufacturers design it. However, when Italian design houses interfere it can be so, says Jeroen Booij.
The electric car isn’t new. In fact, the craze to electrify the worldwide rolling-stock is nothing more than recharging an old idea. Still, all big motor manufacturers are trumpeting about new electric city cars now. Problem is their concepts resemble vehicles for the disabled with their jumbo glasshouses, wedge noses and fake aerodynamic styling. Question is whether a small electric city car can come in an attractive shape at all.  AMC Amitron However, that same year, an Italian design house came with a vehicle to a similar concept at the Turin motor show. It was the Ghia designed Rowan Electric vehicle. The American Rowan company owned DeTomaso at the time and had a stake in Ghia too, so the collaboration might not have been too much of a surprise; the car never the less was. A 2+2 with three doors and two electric engines, it was good for a top speed of 75 km/h and a 320 kilometres range. Again, it never made production.  Ghia Rowan But then came the seventies, with their oil crises. And the idea of a small city car, independent of petrol, was rapidly dusted off again. All the major Italian carrozzerias tried their luck with this type of vehicle. Michelotti teamed up with British electric motor manufacturer Crompton to design a car for British Leyland, based on a shortened Mini but unsuccessful. They tried it again with the Michelotti Lem – for Laboratorio Elettrico Mobile, that, strangely, was designed by a journalist, Gianni Rogliatti. Again, it was no success.  Michelotti Leyland Crompton  Michelotti Lem  Zagato Zele When the Middle East opened up the oil pipes again, the electric car disappeared as soon as it had re-entered the market, only to return every now and then when a new energy crisis addressed for. Zagato tried their luck in the early eighties with the ungainly Elletrica Minivan and there was the Giugiaro-designed Biga at the 1992 Turin Motor Show, but these too were not the success hoped for.  Zagato Elettrica Douglas  ItalDesign Biga  Pininfarina Nido  Pininfarina Bolloré B0 But coolest of them all comes from Giugiaro. Its sold by the NICE (No Internal Combustion Engine) electric car company and named MyCar. It should go on sale in the UK later this year. With only 40 miles the range is pretty low, but standard equipment includes electric windows and mirrors, MP3-CD stereo and 14-inch alloys. All that for £8995, I’d say its smarter than a Smart.  |
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