After my post bemoaning the lack of small post war European “Everyman” cars, I’ve seen quite a few little Fiats around with a similar shape to the Bambino, although the engine size is generally 550 cc now instead of the old 500. Inflation I suppose.
What I had completely forgotten in the small car stakes are the little Japanese cars. The Suzuki Swift is ubiquitous now, but its history is more complicated than I had hoped when I started to trawl through Wikipedia just now. The name has been around since the mid 80s, but confusingly, it was for cars that looked nothing like the current ones. A body shape more similar to now dates from around twenty years ago.
On the other hand, I remember very clearly a work car my mother had back in the eighties, a red Honda City. I thought it was the ugliest car I had ever seen. A famous series of adverts at the time had them promoted by the UK band Madness.
When my father died in the early nineties, and as we kids had all left home, a well meaning brother in law told my mum that at least she could finally buy a sensible small car now. This infuriated her so much she went straight out and bought a huge Ford truck. At five foot two* on a good day, she was completely invisible behind the wheel, Heaven knows what her visibility was. She was a fan of touch parking, with the bumpers to prove it, and could never understand why people would get upset when she hit them. It was always at low speed, and wasn’t that exactly what bumpers were for?? Bless.
*5’2” , does that mean anything to anyone younger than Gen X now? I had an elderly patient say they were eleven stone the other day, I can’t remember the last time someone described their weight in stones to me. Are babies still pounds and ounces??