From Jacques Tati’s camper van to Amsterdam’s Cantas, the microcar shows how transport can be both comic and radical.
One of my favourite parts of travelling is noticing how people ‘design’ their day-to-day life. I’m always drawn to the mundane details: the front doors, the typefaces on house numbers, the design of a street sign. Holiday shopping used to bring the thrill of the chase – finding items only available in certain places. Now, almost everything is a click away.
What feels less touched by homogenisation is the everyday. These small, overlooked details start to look like set design once you pay attention – compositions that reveal taste and circumstance.
The world is always staging itself, whether or not anyone is watching.
That’s what I call Everyday Theatre: unintentional scenes of daily life, from a half-drawn curtain to a lone chair on the pavement to the design of a barbershop. I’ve begun treating them as an archive; fragments of stage sets found in the wild, collected city by city. And sometimes these everyday sets aren’t just static – they move. Enter the microcar.
The Microcar 🚗
I’m in Amsterdam at the moment, where the bike is the de facto method of transportation. However there is an alternative option if you still want to use the bike lane: enter the microcar. I have to admit, I’ve become mildly obsessed with these tiny vehicles since I got here. Their shape and size make them almost toy-like, and whilst there is something surreal about seeing adult life shrunk down, they serve a real purpose - an easy way of getting around the city, and nailing the quasi-impossible task of finding parking on Amsterdam’s city streets.
A microcar face-off between classic and modern in Bos en Lommer, Amsterdam
The origins of the Microcar
Tiny cars have been around for a long time. Post-WW2, a fuel shortage spurred a flurry of small, fuel-conscious designs. Although most of these designs faded out in the 1960s in Europe, they never lost popularity in Asia, particularly in Japan with kei cars.
The Peel P50, BMW Isetta and The Heinkel Kabine 153, The original 1953 Isetta Bubble car.
Japan's microcar (and van) game is still going strong
Originally designed as mobility vehicles for elderly or disabled drivers, the iconic Canta was developed in 1995 by Dutch carmaker Waaijenberg together with the Delft University of Technology. The width of the vehicle is only 1.10 metres, so they can be used on cycle paths as well as the pavement; and each one has custom designed controls depending on the needs of the user. No disability is required to drive these, just insurance. So iconic is the Canta, that it even got its own role in a ballet as part of a collaboration with the Dutch National Ballet.
The sight of a fleet of red Cantas pirouetting across the stage says everything about how embedded they are in Dutch culture.
Microcar vs SUV
One thing I have noticed and LOVED is the lack of SUVs in Amsterdam. Admittedly this is probably because they barely fit down the narrow streets, but it did make me think about how bloated and ‘un-fun’ most modern cars are.
Colourful, slightly stupid, but joyful nonetheless
I love their childlike design, bright colour palette and comically minimal interiors. The doors of these vehicles probably have more in common with a washing machine than a Range Rover. They shrink the presence of the car in the city – removing the ego from driving, which is sorely needed, especially in places like London and LA. Over 60% of new cars sold in the UK and US are SUVs, many now too big for a standard parking space – a strange excess at a time when more people than ever are living (and driving) alone. In Amsterdam, a one-metre-wide microcar looks less like a gimmick and more like the future.
A reflection of the times?
Jacques Tati often used cars as comic props to expose the absurdities of modern design. In Trafic (1971), Monsieur Hulot shepherds a gadget-laden camper van prototype to a motor show, its endless fold-out features parodying our obsession with bigger, better, more. Microcars flip that logic on its head: instead of excess, they offer almost nothing – toy-like shells that shrink driving down to its bare essentials. Both, though, share the same theatrical quality. Like Tati’s camper, the microcar makes the street feel staged, reminding us that vehicles aren’t just transport, they’re cultural artefacts.
The iconic camper van and poster from Trafic (1971)
In the sixties, traffic jams were still rare – staged here for comic effect in Jacques Tati’s Playtime (1967).
Looking at these cars today, they feel radical - but in reality they are pure practicality. How much nicer would our streets be if everybody drove these instead? Given the rising cost of fuel and the overcrowding of our roads, one would think these cars made more sense for the future. The Microlino charges like an iPhone in under 4 hours on a standard household socket – surely this is the way forward?
The microcar evolution: the Estrima Biro, Fiat Topolino and the Micro Mobility Microlino
I think these vehicles say a lot about the space we think we deserve on the streets, and how our car reflects our ego rather than our desire to get from A to B quickly and efficiently. I really hope their return signals a shift towards smaller, more efficient urban design. Were I to live in mainland Europe, I would 100% consider buying one, though I’m not sure the UK roads are ready. In London, where cycling can already feel precarious, I’m not convinced I’d feel safer in a microcar either. But maybe the question isn’t whether the UK is ready for microcars, but whether we can afford not to be.
Would you swap your SUV for a washing-machine-door microcar?