OK, I have to chime in. It took me a couple days to find pictures.
In my senior year of college (76-78), I worked for Colgate Palmolive in Ndola in Zambia Africa. The gal I dated had a 1950s Fiat 500. It’s like half the size of the cars you guys were talking about.
These pictures are off the Internet, that’s not me, but notice the roof of the car is just above his belt line. And yes, it was a four seater. 500cc motor.
Colgate provided us with a white Fiat 128, which was like a limousine compared to this thing. The only new car imported into the country at that time, every single one was white, so we would put all kinds of crazy stuff on our antennas so when you came out of the grocery store or whatever, you knew which one was yours. Our didn’t have the fancy chrome bumpers, and chrome hubcaps.
It was a five seater. And somebody just said it here, neither one of them had enough power to get out of their own way, and the entire area was flat like a desert plain. We actually drove the little one about 250 miles each way to Victoria Falls in Livingston. Once you got out of city limits, you drove with the temperature gauge. You’d put your foot flat on the floor and watch the gauge slowly rise, and when it creeped to the end of the hot zone, you took your foot off the floor for about two minutes and it would cool down to normal, and then you’d put your foot flat on the floor again. Once you got the hang of that, you could go as fast as 80 km/he! That’s like 48 mph, screaming! The back seat held the luggage and the beer, which was unfortunately warm. The group was about 40 Brits, and two of us Americans.
I don’t remember the tank size or the engine size, but I want to say they only took about 15 or 20 L, and it would easily make the 250 mile trip on one tank.
The big one was like a small Amana refrigerator on grocery cart wheels, but the refrigerator was better built, and the “snail” was like driving a carnival bumper car, except it wasn’t near as heavy and agile.
Talk about a blast from the past, whew!
. For those observent ones, I did have a second for a short time but that one is more complicated and I spent more time in the red/blue one, I think 70k miles on it then 120k on the Tracker...
