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With rare exceptions, most cars on sale today have engines with capacities of between 1.0 and 8.0 litres. In the past, the range was much wider.
Before the First World War, American manufacturers Peerless and Pierce-Arrow both produced cars with engines measuring 13.5 litres. Other classic cars have been powered by motors which make the 875cc TwinAir unit in current Fiat models look simply enormous.
In this feature we’re considering cars in the latter group. All of them were designed before the 21st century and had engines of less than 650cc, and we’re presenting them in descending order of capacity.
Also produced by other manufacturers including Seat (as pictured above), the 600 was Fiat’s first small car to go on sale after the Second World War.
Like many larger cars, it had a four-cylinder water-cooled engine, but this one, known as the 100 Series, was very much a miniature example of its type. The smallest version fitted to the 600 measured just 633cc.
The 600 was produced from 1955 to 1969, but the 100 Series engine, available in sizes of up to 1050cc, was still being used as late as 2000.
The short-lived Renault 3 was a cheaper and simpler version of the already cheap and simple Renault 4.
At the time of their launch in 1961, both models were fitted with the Billancourt engine which had made its debut in their predecessor, the Renault 4CV (also known as the Renault 750).
In the 4, it retained its previous size of 747cc, but for the 3 it was given a narrower bore which reduced its capacity to 603cc.
The Ami was mechanically very similar to the Citroën 2CV, but since it was also larger and heavier it was given an expanded 602cc version of the 2CV’s air-cooled flat-twin engine.
Other small Citroëns of the period would also be given this engine. These eventually included the 2CV itself, though that model soldiered on with the 435cc version until several years after the Ami’s debut in 1961.
When launched in 1976, the LN was essentially a three-door Peugeot 104 hatchback fitted with Citroën’s 602cc twin-cylinder engine.
This wasn’t Citroën’s best idea, and the LN was discontinued after just two years.
It was replaced in 1978 by the LNA, which was available with a more modern 652cc unit used in that year’s Citroën Visa, or two versions of a four-cylinder engine measuring 954cc and 1124cc.
Although it didn’t look like it, the Méhari open-topped utility vehicle was related to Citroën’s 2CV, Ami and Dyane saloons.
It was introduced in 1968, by which time Citroën had abandoned the smaller versions of the 2CV engine. The 602cc unit was therefore the only one offered in the Méhari.
Later known as the fortwo, the original smart city car was offered with a variety of three-cylinder turbocharged petrol and diesel engines.
The first of these measured 599cc, and was available with three power outputs of up to 61bhp – by far the highest of any engine included in this list.
The related smart roadster and roadster-coupé were fitted only with a later 698cc unit (or, in the case of a prototype developed by Brabus, two joined together to form a bi-turbo V6). They do not therefore qualify for inclusion here, though we thought they merited a brief mention.
Fiat’s replacement for the Nuova 500, which we’ll come to shortly, was only ever fitted with an inline two-cylinder engine. Its size varied during the lifetime of the car, though, reaching 704cc in later years.
The original unit, however, was notably smaller, at just 594cc. This engine was used for the first five years of production, until the end of 1977.
DKW, the forerunner of today’s Audi, was the world’s leading producer of motorcycles – and of two-stroke engines – by the time it ventured into car manufacture in the late 1920s.
Its first four-wheeled model, the Typ P (Type P in English), had a 584cc inline two-cylinder engine which, of course, operated on the two-stroke cycle.
The same engine was used for several later DKW cars including the F1 of 1931-’32. Right up until the name change to Audi in the 1960s, the company was still building two-strokes, though by that time they had three cylinders and capacities exceeding one litre.
The 600 was a larger, four-wheeled development of the Isetta bubble car which BMW began building in 1955.
The extra weight and drag compared with the little Isetta prompted BMW to fit a much larger and more powerful engine.
Although the three-wheeled Isetta could make do with a single cylinder, the 600 required two. Its capacity was well over double that of the unit used in the smaller car at 582cc.
Public enthusiasm for the 600 was muted. It was discontinued in 1959, when the Isetta still had three years of production life ahead of it.
The first Fiat 500 was nicknamed ‘Topolino’, which means ‘little mouse’ in English and is also what Italians call Mickey Mouse.
It was manufactured from 1936 to 1955, with a radical redesign (as demonstrated in the picture above) in 1949.
Despite the visual change, every Topolino had the same engine, which measured 569cc. Compared with most others on this list, it had a notably ‘grown-up’ design, with four cylinders and water cooling.
Known in Japan as the first-generation Cervo, the SC100 was fitted with a 970cc four-cylinder engine.
In its home market, it had a 539cc three-cylinder two-stroke so that it would qualify for the local kei car regulations, which at the time specified a maximum capacity of 550cc.
In the UK, the SC100 was known informally as the Whizzkid. This would almost certainly not have happened if it had been sold here with the two-stroke, which produced only 28bhp.
The Spider was the first production car fitted with a rotary engine to the design of the German engineer Felix Wankel.
The relative capacities of piston and rotary engines has been a controversial subject for many years, but NSU’s single-rotor unit is generally accepted as measuring 497cc.
NSU produced the car from 1964 to 1967. Its charming appearance contrasts heavily with the staggering noise the engine makes if fitted with a megaphone exhaust for competition purposes.
Visually almost identical to the Fiat Nuova 500, this Austrian derivative featured Steyr-Puch’s own engine. Its two cylinders were horizontally opposed, rather than being mounted vertically and alongside each other as in the Fiat unit.
A remarkably successful car in its class in motorsport events, the 500 was available with engine sizes of up to 660cc, but in its original form it measured 493cc.
Morgan’s first production car was a three-wheeler which was fitted with several different engines during its production life.
At its launch in 1911, the choice was between single- or twin-cylinder units, both supplied by JA Prestwich. The former measured 482cc – by no means an unusual size for a JAP, but the smallest in Morgan’s long history.
The Runabout was the only car ever displayed in the shop window of the Harrods department store in London, which was briefly a Morgan agent.
The Nuova (‘new’) Fiat 500 was the almost immediate successor of the Topolino, launched two years after the earlier model was discontinued.
Its engine was much simpler, being air-cooled and having just two cylinders. It was also considerably smaller, at 479cc.
It wasn't until 1971, 16 years after production began and four before it ended, that the 500 finally received an engine larger than the Topolino’s, at 594cc. This was the same unit initially used for the Fiat 126, which came along in 1972.
The Dyane was an upmarket version of the 2CV and was fitted at one time or another with all but the earliest of the air-cooled flat-twin engines used in the older model.
These included the 435cc and 602cc units which powered nearly every Dyane ever built. However, for a few months after its launch in 1967 it was built with the 425cc engine which had been part of the 2CV range since the mid 1950s.
We enter the curious world of the sub-400cc car with the Vespa 400. This microcar was designed by Italian company Piaggio, manufacturer of the Vespa scooters.
However, it was built in France by ACMA, which also produced Vespa scooters under licence. The rear-mounted, two-cylinder, two-stroke engine measured 393cc – absurdly large for a scooter, but definitely on the small side for a European car launched in 1957.
Successful in its first year, the 400 quickly went into a decline; it was discontinued in 1961.
As previously mentioned, the 2CV was available at various times with air-cooled flat twins of 425cc, 435cc and 602cc.
None of these featured when the car made its war-delayed debut in 1948. The engine used then measured just 375cc, and produced a mere 9bhp.
Despite its lack of power, very basic specification and a design Citroën had started work on 12 years previously, the 2CV was, and remained, a big hit.
The 375cc engine was still being used in 1960, and the car itself remained in production for 30 years after that, latterly fitted only with the 602cc motor.
Although it wasn’t badged as a Suzuki, the Suzulight was the Japanese motorcycle manufacturer’s first serious attempt to enter the car market.
It was available as a saloon, a van or a pick-up. All versions were front-wheel drive, with a 359cc air-cooled two-stroke engine mounted transversely under the bonnet.
The Suzulight made its debut in 1955 and remained in production until 1969, four years after the launch of the Suzuki Fronte.
