Talk:City car

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[edit] Claim to be first

Sorry if this has already been debated at length — I'll be surprised if it hasn't been — but is it reasonable of this article to claim that the Fiat Panda was the first city car? Starting with Fiat themselves, they produced many cars before the Panda which fit the definition. What about the original 500, and the later 126? And an absolutely classic city car, even marketed as such in all but name (and perhaps even in name, I haven't checked), for swinging 60s London, the original Mini.

Also, please note that I'm making the mistake of saying all small cars are city cars; the Volkswagen Beetle and Citroën 2CV were not aimed that way.

Later addition to comment: I've been looking into this a bit, cos it's one of those curiosities you just can't ignore. I found this online (in Google's cache, not in the page currently at this URL): [1] — it's from a product design magazine, and speculates that the BMW Isetta "bubble car" may have been the first "city car". – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 19:20, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

The Isetta is a two-seater, therefore a microcar, like the Smart ForTwo (city cars are all four-seaters).

Some competitors of the Fiat 500 have been replaced by larger, newer models. A careful tracking is needed to avoid confusions; that's why I've done some time charts / templates (VW, Ford, Citroën, Fiat). There you can see if an early car would be classified as a supermini or a city car. The problem is that many articles on older cars are very short and aren't accurate on which competitors they had. I've corrected some mistakes in these articles, but an extensive seach in Google would take too much time for only one person. - NaBUru38 20:43, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. I'm not sure that microcar and city car are neccessarily mutually exclusive. But the work you're doing sounds great and I don't mean to undermine it. What we definitely need though, is a clearer definition. For example, the way the city car article is worded doesn't actually rule out two-seaters (and the way it mentions microcars is too subtle to explain the point you've just made here.) The Car classification article doesn't use seats in its city car definition at all. – Kieran T ^{(talk | contribs)} 23:47, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] City car / Microcar

The statement "microcars which are two-seaters;" is wrong. [[2]] shows a new four seater with a fairly clear description from a reliable source and many microcars have more than two seats Zundapp Janus for example. Mighty Antar 10:05, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I musdt say many automobile websites use wrong terms. I've seen the Fiat Punto be called a compact car, the Twingo a supermini... City cars simply can't be two-seaters, therefore the Smart Fortwo isn't one. I guess there might be one or three-seater microcars, but the most common ones are two-seaters. -- NaBUru38 (talk) 01:25, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary, "compact car" and "super mini" are just descriptive terms. Like most car classifications they are relative and non-specific. Organisations like Euro NCAP use them only in this relative way so that you can compare your car with a near sized rival, not as a precise classification - all the cars from Smart to Lamborghini do the same Euro Ncap test. Like most unscientific classifications, everyone knows what a particular class of car is (or at least thinks they do), until they try to define it in very precise terms. Are the Lotus Elan and Lotus Carlton both sports cars? If you park your Fiat Punto alongside a Range Rover, which is the compact car? Mighty Antar (talk) 11:45, 21 November 2007 (UTC)