Thanks to BoingBoing (where I get a lot of my interesting "news"), I see that the National Microcar and Minicar Club will be holding their 2004 meet in Huntington Beach, California in July. If it weren't for this whole living-overseas thing, I could be there -- but now it looks like I'll miss my chance to see multiple examples of my favorite cars, the BMW Isetta and the Messerschmitt KR200. (I've seen plenty of them in museums, but I've never seen one running ...)
This ties into Germany not only because the Isetta and the Messerschmitt are prime examples of materials-limited post-WWII German auto production, but because we see examples of their spiritual descendant, the Smart fortwo coupe, tooling around on the streets of Hamburg every day. There's a rental company, Sixti, that offers Smart coupes for rent for just 5 Euro a day! Since all of our dog-boarding options seem to be on the outskirts of Hamburg, outside of easy mass-transit range, I suspect we'll be renting a Smart sooner or later so that we can drop Scout off at a Hundehotel. (Small dog -- small car -- how cuuuuuuuuute!)
Stay tuned for the road test and photo spread.
(It's too bad that Sixti doesn't rent some of Smart's wackier models ...)
Posted by Kevin at February 19, 2004 01:54 PM