Minima - the forerunner of the Smart
01/30/2017
The scales fell from their eyes in 1968, when Victor Bouffort and Henri Viard observed the traffic in Paris. Most cars only had one or two passengers.
There had to be a more suitable transportation solution than the usual four- and five-seater large limousines.
And so they developed the Minima. Bouffort, the inventor and developer, was of course in charge. He designed a tubular frame chassis on which a plastic body with sliding doors was placed. The engine was a 30 hp unit, powerful enough to accelerate the little car to 120 km/h. This was important to them, as the Minima also had to be able to drive on the highways around the big city, while at the same time finding space in conventional parking lots.
The Minima was presented in 1973 at the Paris Motor Show and on the 56th floor of the Montparnasse skyscraper.
The idea was convincingly realized and the two creative minds even thought of "car sharing" at the time. But they were probably too early with their proposal, and nothing came of the planned series production.
Now you can at least see the surviving prototype at the Rétromobile in Paris from February 8 to 12, 2017, but we see the ideal successors, namely the Smart, on our streets every day.
