BARRINGTON

Has there ever been a smaller car than the Isetta?

Indeed, could there ever be a smaller car than the Isetta?

Shorter than the Smart Car and simpler than a Tata Nano, the two-seater-and-not-much-else was produced in the tens of thousands in Europe from 1953 to 1962.

Sure it took 30 seconds to get up to 30 mph — top speed was about 45 mph — but at 60 miles to the gallon it was cheap to run.

“It could run on any kind of gasoline,” said Jim Adams in a recent interview outside his house in a neat neighborhood of small houses and impressive flower gardens. He has been driving a BMW Isetta in one form or another since 1963. “It thinks 70 octane (gasoline) is pretty good stuff.”

“I remember going into a gas station with an empty (3 1/2 gallon) tank and a dollar and leaving with a full tank and change,” he said of driving in the 1960s when gas was about 30 cents a gallon.

Actually, Adams, 61, has had two of the tiny cars over the years. His first one was a red 1957 BMW Isetta 300 Cabriolet, which he bought for $10 in 1963.

He said it belonged to a friend of his who went into the service and his mother offered to give to him. But he thought he should pay something so offered her $10 to take it away.

“It was different, available and cheap and I needed a car,” he said, noting he was driving a 1949 Plymouth that he had inherited from his brother at the time. “I persuaded it to run and drove it, sometimes very badly, for many years.”

The car has room for two adults sitting side by side on a bench seat in surprising comfort with a shelf behind them as the only storage area. Below the shelf are housed the spare tire and engine, which is set on the opposite side to the driver to balance the weight.

The car has four wheels for stability, two on either side in the front and the two driving wheel set closer together at the rear. The entire front of the car folds out to one side to serve as its only door. The roof includes a square area of canvas that can be folded back, which served as an alternative exit in the event of an accident.

The instrument panel, such as it is, is attached to the front door on the inside and the steering column folds out when the door is opened, courtesy of a universal joint.

A vent on the front door provides a draft of fresh air on hot days while a heater under the seat blows in hot air from the engine. A pipe flattened to produce a hot flow of air across the driver’s side of the windshield serves as defroster. It has one windshield wiper. “Perfect for half a windshield,” he said.

“It’s quite robustly built and very reliable,” he said, and at 770 pounds quite light as he demonstrated by lifting one front corner.

“I’m King of the Kids in the neighborhood, by the way,” he said laughing. “Actually, I’m King of the Kids wherever I go.”

Adams went into the Navy following high school, coming out in 1972. That was when he bought his second and current Isetta, a yellow 1957 BMW Isetta 300, which he bought as a parts car for his first one.

“It had deteriorated and needed parts,” he said of the cabriolet. He said a man knocked on his door one day, said he had an Isetta that did not run and was he interested in buying it.

“I’ll sell it to you for what I paid for it — $25,” Adams said the man told him, adding, “So for $35 I had two cars.”

The Iso Isetta was developed in Italy by Iso Rivolta, a former refrigerator company (Isothermos) founded in 1939 by industrialist Renzo Rivolta. Following World War II, the company started producing motorcycles, scooters and small three-wheeled trucks.

In 1952, the company designed the diminutive car —7 1/2 feet long by 4 1/2 feet wide — famously by lining up scooters on either side of a refrigerator.

“The door looks like it comes from a refrigerator,” said Adams, referring to the entire front of the car, which opens to let the driver and passenger in.

The car was officially called the Isetta, which means “little Iso” in Italian. Unofficially, it became known as the “bubble car” in Britain, the “rolling egg” in Germany and the “yogurt pot” in France.

“This was the most successful micro car,” said Adams, noting it was designed to get across town, not for highway driving, as indeed is the Smart Car.

Trouble was, while the Iso design was a good one, the Rivolta production was flawed and the company only sold a thousand or so.

“It wasn’t a very good car,” said Adams. “The 236 cc, 2-cylinder, two-stroke did not work well and the suspension was crude at best.”

However, Rivolta licensed production of the Isetta to auto makers in Brazil, Britain, France, Spain and, most successfully, to a certain German motorcycle manufacturer — Bayerische Motoren Werke, better known as BMW.

Adams said BMW, whose facilities had been bombed during the war, was looking for an existing car to manufacture. The Isetta was perfect because it was designed to run on a motorcycle engine.

He said BMW not only bought the rights to produce the car but “machinery, materials and dies.”

“BMW corrected most of the major mechanical deficiencies,” he said, notably replacing the engine with a BMW one-cylinder, four-stroke, 247 cc R27 motorcycle engine.

Overall, BMW produced more than 161,000 Isettas by 1962 when it ceased production.

However, BMW is planning to produce a small electric city car by 2011 that it has named the Isetta, according to leftlanenews.com. It is teaming up with Fiat, which will produce an almost identical car that it will name the Topolino in honor of one of its most famous small cars.

Adams said he used his newly bought BMW Isetta as a parts car for his first one, but “somewhere I got married and it was not a family car.”

“I needed another car,” he said. “So I put the two Isettas behind the garage, covered them up and left them there,” meaning to fix them “one of these days.”

Adams said he had always been involved with cars — his first job when he was 13 years old was “pumping gas, fixing tires and fixing lawnmowers” at a Barrington service station. So he went to work as an automotive teacher at the Rhode Island Trades Shop School in Providence while his family grew by two daughters, who are now grown up. He and his wife, Holly, now have a 2 1/2 year old grandson.

He stayed with the school until 1986 when he started teaching in the automotive department at the New England Institute of Technology.

In the early 1990s, the school got involved in the American Tour de Sol, now known as the 21st Century Automotive Challenge, which was a race for alternatively fueled vehicles.

“The school needed a car and I had two cars,” he said, adding “these things are ideally suited to convert to solar.”

So he brought the cabriolet in and the team at NEIT took out the motor and transmission and put in an electric engine and added a solar panel onto the roof, painting the outside is the school colors of blue and gold.

“It did very, very well,” he said, adding it was one of the most efficient solar vehicles ever built.

Where is it now? “Sitting in a warehouse at NEIT with a bad case of storage rash,” he said.

Adams retired from NEIT in 1997 and until recently was investigating mechanical failures such as brake, acceleration or steering systems for insurance companies — for S.D. Lyons, an automotive forensic company based in Seekonk, Mass.

About three years ago he decided “to fix that old car,” referring to his remaining Isetta.

“I had converted the cabriolet (to solar/electric power) and kept the other largely intact,” he said, noting that he now had an extra engine and transmission.

“The car was pretty beat, you could not use it,” he said, adding that the rear quarters were both crushed. “It was quite a mess, but I bludgeoned it back into submission.”

He said he had restored the entire car except for stitching in the upholstery and fixing the crank shaft which needed a special press.

Three years later and the car looks very smart, but Adams is quick to point out that it is not perfect. “We drive it around 1,500 miles a year,” he said. “This car was made to be used.”

“And everywhere we go, everyone has the same reaction,” he said. “First, their eyes get as big as saucers and then they all smile.”

Indeed, he has a notice for the curious that he hangs in the car. It lists the basic details about the car, starting with the basic message: “Yes, this is a car!” and ending with: “Sense of humor required for ownership.”

Auto Biography tells an interesting story about a car and its driver. If you think you have a newsworthy story to tell about your car, write to Auto Biography, Features Department, The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St. Providence RI 02902 or e-mail projocars@projo.com. Be sure to put “Auto Biography” in the subject field.

The car doesn’t have to be a classic or expensive, but it should be somehow unique. The driver must be willing to be interviewed by a reporter about what makes this car special and to be photographed with the car.

pelsworth@projo.com