Customer Reviews

The Macro World of Micro Cars

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I purchased this book as a gift for a hard to please 62 year old co-worker who has been in the process of restoring a Vespa over the years. His comment was that this was the best gift he has ever received. The book is loaded with detailed color photos, descriptions, and information for all micro-car lovers everywhere.

I have this book and love it. Any Microcar Nut will. It's not a literary piece by any means. But it has many nice pictures of microcars and sufficient information on each of the cars. This book is exactly what it is meant to be - a fun book. The list price is $29.95 US; the $45.00 MSRP on Amazon is misleading/incorrect (it's actually the Canadian MSRP). So, if you are looking for a deal, don't buy it here...

Just after World War II there was a great demand for automobiles. In Europe a number of companies began building small, very inexpensive automobiles. You may remember the Isetta and the Messerschmit. Or in the United States we had the Crosley and the Nash Metropolitan (There's one of these for sale at Ebay as I write, $5,000.). All in all there were dozens of brands, most of which had their heyday in the 1950's and died in the 1960's.

Today small cars are staging somewhat of a comeback. The Mercedes Smart is starting to be imported: easy to park, high fuel economy. The worldwide success of There are quite a few others in the design phase all around the world. Concept cars have been shown by Ford, Toyota, Lamborghini (can you imagine), and others.

This book is a somewhat nostalgic look at the collectable cars of the past, the people (and museums) who collect them, and a short chapter on what is known about the new cars being worked on now. It has hundreds of pictures, copy that is somewhat historical, somewhat nostalgic.

This is an interesting car sub-category, (I guess you'd call it.) where collectors are beginning to come out and where prices haven't gone through the roof -- yet.

Kate Trant and Austin Williams' THE MACRO WORLD OF MICRO CARS surveys the microcar: once a common sight in towns and cities and touted as solutions to the postwar demand for economic cars, and now making a modern comeback. What happened to fuel the early interest in microcars, what led to decades of dis-interest, and why the rise now? THE MACRO WORLD OF MICRO CARS receives in-depth analysis in chapters which cover their manufacture and design. Vintage ads in full color blend with contemporary photos to provide an outstanding survey of the culture, creation and appeal of the micro car.

This is an attractively designed book, although I can't help thinking its minimalist layout and arty typefaces would look more at home if the subject matter was more modern. I suppose the cars themselves are minimalist, in a way, and definitely `arty'. Even so, the book looks like it would be about cutting-edge Italian kitchenware, not ancient oily cars.
To some extent, the book is a triumph of form over function, certainly if you thought its function was to provide information in detail about microcars. No, it doesn't do that.
There's barely any text, and most pages have no more than one or two photographs, so it really just gives you a fleeting impression of things.
There's a section about people and their microcars, a brief section about the history of the little devices, and an A-Z of the main manufacturers.
So, it's nicely produced, would look nice on your Ikea coffee table, but won't tell you all that much about the subject.