38 super small-engined classics

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20. Honda T360: 356cc​

Honda’s first four-wheeled vehicle was the T360 pick-up truck, which was manufactured from 1963 to 1967.
Its power unit is believed to be the smallest four-cylinder engine ever put into production, at just 356cc. Other engines have been this size or smaller, but all of them had fewer cylinders.
Honda planned to use the 356cc unit in the very pretty S360 sports car, but the project was abandoned.

 

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21. Mazda R360: 356cc​

The R360 was the first Mazda passenger car. Launched in 1960, it was a two-seat coupé with a 356cc air-cooled V-twin engine mounted in the rear.
The related B360 pick-up truck used the same engine, but in this case it was mounted up front and drove the front wheels.
The Mazda P360 Carol four-seater was essentially a saloon version of the R360, but it had a very slightly larger water-cooled four-cylinder engine measuring 358cc.

 

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22. Subaru 360: 356cc​

It seems that 356cc was a popular engine size for Japanese manufacturers making their debut in car production.
Among several others mentioned here, it applied to the Subaru 360, whose engine was an air-cooled two-stroke inline twin mounted transversely in the rear.
Built from 1958 to 1971, the 360 was available with saloon, estate and convertible body styles. The Suzuki Sambar truck, introduced in 1961, used the same engine and platform.

 

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23. Suzuki Fronte: 356cc​

Unlike the earlier Suzulight, the Fronte of 1967 was the first vehicle to be sold as a Suzuki.
The name implied that the new car was front-engined and front-wheel drive, though in these respects it was no different from the Suzulight.
The engine was new, though. At 356cc, it was the smallest three-cylinder ever put into production.
Unusually (but not uniquely) for cars in this list, the Fronte was driven by Stirling Moss, who was persuaded to take the wheel for a drive from Milan to Rome for publicity purposes.

 

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24. Honda N360: 354cc​

The N360 was the first of several Honda N cars with similar designs and various engine capacities produced from 1967.
The most powerful of these, known as the N600, was the first Honda officially imported to the US.
All versions had an inline two-cylinder engine with the increasingly unfashionable feature of air cooling. The unit in the N360 was the smallest of them, at just 354cc.

 

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25. Lloyd 350: 347cc​

Two completely different companies sharing the name Lloyd built cars which easily meet the sub-650cc requirement for inclusion here.
From 1936 until the outbreak of the Second World War, the Lloyd company of Grimsby produced a model called the 350.
It was powered by a rear-mounted 347cc Villiers engine which drove just one of the back wheels, by means of a chain.
A decade later, Lloyd introduced the much more powerful 600, but this can be mentioned only in passing because its engine measured 654cc.

 

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26. Berkeley Sports: 322cc​

Berkeley’s first car was produced very briefly in late 1956 and early 1957 with a 322cc air-cooled two-stroke twin supplied by British Anzani.
Like the Suzuki Fronte, the Berkeley Sports was publicised by Stirling Moss, who drove one round the Goodwood circuit on its first public showing.
The British Anzani engine was soon abandoned in favour of 328cc and later 492cc units built by Excelsior.

 

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27. Lloyd 300: 293cc​

The German Lloyd company was part of the Borgward Group, and had nothing to do with the Grimsby-based firm mentioned previously.
In 1950, this Lloyd introduced its first post-war model. The 300 was powered (to the extent of 10bhp) by a 293cc air-cooled twin which drove the front wheels.
The 300 was sold as a saloon, a coupé and an estate, before being replaced by the Lloyd 400 in 1953.

 

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28. Renault Voiturette: 273cc​

The single most important event in Renault’s history occurred on Christmas Eve 1898, when Louis Renault demonstrated that his prototype Voiturette could be driven up the steep Rue Lepic in Paris without stopping.
That car, and the production versions built to meet the demand created by the extraordinary climb, were all fitted with a 273cc De Dion-Bouton engine.
The public perception of acceptable engine sizes changed dramatically in the early 20th century. The engine in the Renault that won the 1906 French Grand Prix had a capacity of 13 litres (approximately 12.7 litres more than the little De Dion-Bouton unit) and was not considered particularly large.

 

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29. Lloyd 250: 250cc​

As mentioned before, the German Lloyd 350 was replaced by the Lloyd 400 in 1952.
The 400 (pictured) had a 386cc two-stroke twin-cylinder engine, and would therefore have appeared earlier in this list if it hadn't been for an even smaller-engined derivative which arrived in 1956.
The Lloyd 250 was almost identical to the 400, but its engine measured only 250cc and produced a particularly modest 11bhp.
Both the 250 and the 400 were discontinued in 1957.

 

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30. Goggomobil: 245cc​

Before being bought by BMW, Glas produced several models, latterly with engines of up to 3.0 litres.
It entered the motor industry far more modestly with the Goggomobil, which was introduced in 1955.
Goggomobils were offered with a wide variety of body styles, and with rear-mounted two-stroke engines of various sizes. The smallest of these measured just 245cc.

 

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31. Isetta: 236cc​

One of the most recognisable bubble cars of the 1950s, the Isetta was manufactured by several companies, including BMW.
It was originally developed by Iso, the Italian company which would go on to build exceptionally powerful sports cars.
For the Isetta (which means ‘little Iso’), the company created a 236cc two-stroke engine which drove the single rear wheel.
When BMW took over production, it abandoned the original engine and used its own 247cc unit instead. This was later expanded to 298cc for use in the Isetta 300.

 

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32. Fuldamobil: 191cc​

Based in the German city of the same name, Fulda manufactured several small cars under the name Fuldamobil throughout the 1950s and ’60s.
All of them had engines of under 360cc. The smallest was a 191cc air-cooled single-cylinder two-stroke produced by Fichtel & Sachs.
It was fitted to Fuldamobil Type S models sold from 1955 to 1965. Fulda switched to a 198cc Heinkel unit when Fichtel & Sachs discontinued its own engine.

 

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33. Heinkel Kabine: 174cc​

The Kabine three-wheeler, also known as the Cabin Cruiser, was built first in Warnemünde, Germany, then in Dundalk, Ireland and finally (as the Trojan 200) in Croydon, Greater London.
For the purposes of this article, the most interesting versions were the Model 150s built in Warnemünde in 1956 and 1957.
These had the smallest engines ever used by Heinkel/Trojan, measuring just 174cc. Similar single-cylinder four-stroke engines were fitted to other models, but they had capacities of around 200cc.

 

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34. Messerschmitt KR175: 173cc​

The KR175 was the first bubble car built in the Messerschmitt factory to a design by Fritz Fend.
It entered production in 1953 with a 173cc single-cylinder two-stroke produced by Fichtel & Sachs.
In 1955, the engine was replaced by the similar 191cc Fichtel & Sachs unit also used by Fulda, and the model name was changed to KR200.

 

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35. Invacar: 147cc​

As unlikely as it seems now for various reasons, the Invacar was a tiny, single-person vehicle distributed at no cost to disabled people in the UK.
The original engine was a 191cc single-cylinder air-cooled two-stroke supplied by Villiers, but this was replaced when Villiers stopped building it by a much larger Steyr-Puch unit.
All government-owned Invacars were eventually scrapped due to safety concerns, but some examples bought privately are still running.

 

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36. Bond Minicar: 122cc​

The Bond Minicar was produced in seven generations from 1949 to 1966.
The first version, retrospectively known as the Mark A, was originally fitted with a 122cc Villiers single-cylinder two-stroke engine when production began in January 1949.
A 197cc Villiers unit was added to the range in December of the same year. The 122cc motor had been discontinued by the time the Mark B came along in 1951.

 

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37. Peel P50: 49cc​

Peel was famously the only car manufacturer based on the Isle of Man, and its P50 model has been described as the smallest-engined production car ever built.
For its entire production life in the early to mid 1960s, the P50 was fitted with a single-cylinder 49cc engine normally used in DKW motorcycles. The smallest unit DKW ever used for its own cars (including the F1 mentioned previously) was nearly 12 times larger at 584cc.
Continuation versions of the P50 have been built since 2010. They are powered either by an electric motor or another 49cc engine, this time supplied by Honda.

 

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38. Brütsch Mopetta: 48cc​

Largely because of its appearance, the Mopetta is the best-known of a great many short-lived microcars designed in the 1950s by Egon Brütsch.
The size of its single-cylinder engine, designed by ILO to motorise pedal bikes, is often referred to as 50cc and more rarely as 49cc, but even these figures are exaggerations.
The official figure is 48cc. We’ll go with that, while quietly observing that the bore and stroke of 37mm and 44mm actually imply a capacity of 47cc.
This could mean that the Mopetta, rather than the Peel P50, is the world’s smallest-engined production car, but it depends on how you define ‘production car’. Only 14 Mopettas were ever built.