Crosley Hotshot: Micro Sports Car

An American sports car that probably few people are aware of was the 1950-vintage Crosley Hotshot (Wikipedia entry here).

The car was tiny, having a wheelbase of 85 inches (2160 mm). Its engine was a 44 cubic inch (724 cc) 26.5 horsepower straight four.  It performed well in competitions for cars with motors in the 750 cc class.  Hotshots were derived from Crosley sedans and station wagons that I wrote about here.

Below are some Hotshot images.


Gallery

Publicity photo of a Crosley Hotshot. The people provide a sense of its scale.

1949 Hotshot -- Mecum auction photo of the very first one off the assembly line. Its wheels are tiny, making the car seem more toy-like than it actually was.

Rear quarter view of a for sale 1949 Hotshot.  The car has no trunk lid, so the spare tire is mounted atop the trunk.

Front view.  This and the following images are Mecum photos of a 1949 Hotshot.  The air intake is below the bumper.

Overhead view.

Seen from the side, but from an unnaturally low angle.  However, this provides a sense of the styling.  If the car had a door, there could be a clean profile from front to rear.

The Tiny Post-War Crosley Sedan

Very small cars are hard to style.  And the results are almost always not nice-looking.  The current Fiat 500 is one of the best of the lot, whereas BMW's i3 is a visual mess.

During World War 2 the industrial design firm Sundberg-Ferar was hired by industrialist Powel Crosley to style the postwar version of the mini-car he launched in 1939.  Sundberg and Ferar were not "pure" industrial designers lacking experience or feeling for car styling because they had spent time at General Motors' Art & Colour group led by Harley Earl.

Some background on Crosley cars is here.

Assembly line with 1947 Crosleys.  The cars are narrow.

This side view shows the tiny wheels Crosleys rode on.  Larger ones would have looked better, but would have been incompatible with the narrow platform and the need to keep the car light due to the 26.5 horsepower of its motor.  Interestingly, the hood is long, giving the car a more serious presence than it would have had with a stubby front.

A nicely restored '47 model.  It features flow-through fenders (1946 Crosleys were the first postwar American brand to have them).  On the other hand, the side windows do not retract into the doors and door hinges are visible.

Rear view of the same car (Mecum Auctions photos).  Flat window glass all around and no trunk lid.

Another model available in 1947 was this convertible (Barrett-Jackson photo).