Micro Cars on display at the Packard Museum

Staff report

Warren

Back by popular demand, “Micro Cars: Mini Wonders” is now open at the National Packard Museum.

This award-winning special exhibit, which runs through Dec. 30, features more than 20 very small and economical cars and trucks built between 1930 and 1990. The minicars are displayed alongside the museum’s collection of large and luxurious Packard automobiles.

Micro Cars are generally defined as vehicles with motors of no more than 1,500 cubic centimeters. They became popular in the U.S. and Europe after World War I and flourished again after World War II as an economical transportation alternative. Some early Micro Cars were not much more than a motorized tricycle, seating only a driver and a single passenger.

Last year’s “Micro Cars: Mini Wonders” exhibit broke museum admission records and won a first-place award in the interpretive exhibit category from the National Association of Automobile Museums.

This year, curator Bruce Williams has assembled an all-new display of miniature vehicles from private collectors in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana. There are no repeat cars from last year’s exhibit.

Among the more unusual vehicles on display are a 1962 Amphicar (a German-built amphibious vehicle capable of speeds of 7 mph on water and 70 mph on land), a 1959 Autobianchini Bianchina and a 1969 Subaru 360, which is considered to be the original minivan.

This year’s exhibit also features a display of extra-small motorized vehicles built for children, often referred to as “sidewalk racers,” including a 1938 racer with a Maytag twin motor, a 1955 “Thunderbird Junior” built for the Ford Motor Company as a raffle promotion and a 1959 one-quarter scale Ford Model T “Tin Lizzie.”