74-MPG T.25 City Car Makes Smart Car Look Big

Wow.  At just over four feet wide, the recently unveiled T.25 City Car makes ever the mini Smart car look big.

Designed by Gordon Murray and three years in the making, this 74 MPG City Car is just about jaw dropping, well, if you had room for that in there.

The British engineer finally unveiled his T.25 City Car, the Lilliputian runabout he’s spent three years developing. Although the 74-mpg T.25 and its T.27 electric sibling recall the microcars of post-war Europe, it’s quite advanced. Beyond using a tubular steel frame, composite materials and a canopy that opens like a Lamborghini’s doors, the T.25 will use a manufacturing process said to tremendously reduce capital, space and materials.

Many leading automakers are embracing compacts and subcompacts, which could comprise one-third of the U.S. market by 2013. But to say the T.25 is tiny is to say John Isner and Nicolas Mahut can play tennis. At just a hair over 4 feet wide and just shy of 8 feet long, it’s smaller than a Smart ForTwo or Toyota iQ yet can seat three.

A car that small opens up all kinds of possibilities in a congested urban setting. Parked nose to the curb, three will fit in a single space. With a turning radius of just under 20 feet, the car will almost literally turn on a dime. And the T.25 is so narrow you could drive two abreast.

An idea Gordon actually suggests.

Gordon Murray Designs says driving two abreast in a single lane during peak travel times could increase lane usage as much as three-fold, effectively easing congestion by allowing more people to use the road. That’s assuming traffic engineers and traffic laws would allow such a thing and motorists would be willing to cram themselves together to so tightly. Murray isn’t so naive as to think we’ll all be driving side-by-side in cars that could fit in the bed of a pickup truck. But he says a car like the T.25 “creates the opportunity to explore the possibility.”