Word: minicars
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Ford, which has been studying the minicar market for just about a decade, took a long time to decide. In 1962, the company was ready to roll with a small car called the Cardinal, but withdrew it within a few months of production because of fears that the market would not then support a new line. By 1966, however, it was clear that U.S. compacts were losing considerable ground to imports. The Falcon, which reached a peak of 493,000 sales in 1961, was down to 163,000 that year-and to even less in 1967. At a meeting...
...Department of Housing and Urban Development, eager to cut down on air pollution and city traffic headaches, last week endorsed a snappy 9-ft. "minicar" that would be about half as long as today's intermediate Chevrolets and Fords, create one-tenth of the pollution. Developed under a $299,995 HUD grant to the University of Pennsylvania with help from General Motors, the three-passenger, 100-mile-range "hybrid" could whiz along highways at 60 m.p.h. on a small gasoline engine, switch to a battery-powered electric motor for tooling around town...
...hopes to have a prototype built next year, figures that because the car is designed to use existing auto components, it could be mass-produced at a cost of $1,600. HUD ultimately envisions an urban transportation concept under which commuters would pay a fee to join a vast minicar pool, get to and from work in cars kept at central lots, which during the working day would supply idle cars to other pool members...
...time since World War II, Finland has devalued its currency, this time by nearly one-third. In the future, it will require 4.2 Finn-marks, instead of 3.2, to equal a U.S. dollar. The move was received with resignation. Jested Kari Suomalainen, a leading cartoonist: "First we had the minicar, then we had the miniskirt, and now we have the minimark...
Nevertheless, Borgward's freewheeling inventiveness often captured the public fancy. One of his earliest successes was a 1924 three-wheel truck, still widely copied. In the postwar years, Borgward put out the bestselling LP-300 Minicar, catching the bugmobile craze on the rise. If Borgward had concentrated on tiny cars, he might easily have dominated the mini-car market. But after he had sold 350,000 of them, he grew bored, moved on to expand his bigger cars-and failure...