WWII Forced French Luxury Brand Voisin To Pivot And This Minimalist Two-Seater Is The Result

Resources in Europe were a bit thin on the ground following the Second World War. Pretty much everywhere got bombed, and the rebuilding of nations takes a lot of time, money, and stuff to accomplish. In the late 1940s automaker Gabriel Voisin put pen to paper drawing up a minimalist transport device to compete against any variety of other scooter-based microcars. It would be significantly less expensive than a Volkswagen, for example, but still shuttle two people in relative discomfort. He called it the Biscooter, as it was roughly the size of two scooters next to each other. Maybe it was the first side-by-side?

This line of thinking in a post-war environment lead to the massive popularity of later cars like the Austin Mini and Fiat 500. Unfortunately Voisin was a little ahead of the curve, as no manufacturers or customers ever appeared for the Biscooter in France, and the project rotted on the vine for a handful of years.

Read more

• Subway Might Be Regretting Its New Meat Slicers

• Physicists Just Learned Something Major About the Proton

• 'Stupid Waste of Time': Sounds Like Subway's Expensive Automatic Meat Slicers Are a Bust

• iPhone Apps Secretly Harvest Data When They Send You Notifications, Researchers Find

• Netflix Is Doing Great, So It's Killing Off Its Cheapest Ad-Free Plan for Good

Near the end of Autonacional-Voisin Biscúter production, the Spanish state pulled all aluminum shipments from the company in favor of SEAT. Late-production Biscúter were built from steel oil drums delivered to Spain as part of the Marshall Plan.