Car Redux

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

One (not the) car of the future will be extremely low cost, extremely simple, extremely light, it won’t need maintenance, it will be extremely cheap to fix – or so cheap, that it can be tossed when broken. It could look something like the Me.We, a concept car developed by the French architect and designer Jean-Marie Massaud for Toyota.


The car consists of a tubular aluminum structure that carries interchangeable body panels designed in expanded polypropylene. Yes, Styrofoam. The car weighs only 1,650 lbs, the car body itself weighs only 31 lbs. Floor, roof, hood are made from wood, actually from bamboo, wood that grows like weed.

The car can be turned into a pickup, a convertible, an off-roader a small city car.

Massaud’s car is powered by electric wheel hub motors, but that’s not the important part. More important is that there is no adjustable suspension, no panoply of plugs, switches, no electric motors for any and everything that add to the weight clever engineers just have saved. No other technical data are available. “The car drives,” is all a Toyota spokesperson would confirm to Der Spiegel.

We’ll probably never see that car. But it points to one part of the automotive future. Whether we like it, or not.



Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • Jdmcomp Jdmcomp on Apr 28, 2013

    Love the concept. I remember a joint Chrysler/Briggs&Straton project in the past with an air cooled engine (what else?) and a blow molded body. The car resembled a 2-CV in shape and size and was to sell at a very low price. That also did not happen. Exploring these possibilities is wonderful and some fallout could be useful to all autos at some point. The molded styro body could have saved me a bunch in repairs when my youngest was learning to drive.

    • Highdesertcat Highdesertcat on Apr 29, 2013

      The Saturn was supposed to be such a "people's car" concept and I bought into the concept by buying one for my daughter so she could commute to college, back in the nineties. I had owned a VW Bug that gave me excellent service and that's what I compared that Saturn to. But was I ever wrong! I believe I paid somewhere around $12K outright for that stick-shift, four-door plastic car, and right off the bat we had problems with the check-engine light coming on and staying on until serviced under warranty. We went in four times for that little glitch, losing the car three days each time. At around 50K miles during the commute to school it blew its head gasket and physically destroyed the engine when the coolant entered the combustion chambers at high speed (70mph). It was FUBAR. It also destroyed my daughter's confidence in that car and I was forced to buy her something else. We bought a Corolla to replace the Saturn. So a people's car Saturn was not and neither was it a throw-away car. Closest thing on the market these days are the lowest cost entries from Kia and Nissan, but they aren't exactly inexpensive either.

  • Beerboy12 Beerboy12 on Apr 28, 2013

    Bamboo, very strong and does not rust. Interesting!

  • Joe This is called a man in the middle attack and has been around for years. You can fall for this in a Starbucks as easily as when you’re charging your car. Nothing new here…
  • AZFelix Hilux technical, preferably with a swivel mount.
  • ToolGuy This is the kind of thing you get when you give people faster internet.
  • ToolGuy North America is already the greatest country on the planet, and I have learned to be careful about what I wish for in terms of making changes. I mean, if Greenland wants to buy JDM vehicles, isn't that for the Danes to decide?
  • ToolGuy Once again my home did not catch on fire and my fire extinguisher(s) stayed in the closet, unused. I guess I threw my money away on fire extinguishers.(And by fire extinguishers I mean nuclear missiles.)
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