That's actually not a car in the eyes of Johnny Law here-- it's something called a quadricycle, which is to say, it's a 4-wheeled covered scooter. What we have here is a Ligier (say "li-zhay") Excellence, and hot damn, it is tiny-- that Mercedes A-Class parked in front of it is actually more than a foot shorter than a Volkswagen Golf to give you an idea. The concept of quadricycles is to give the driver an errand car for getting around the city (they apparently have a small market being sold as a vehicle to tow behind your Winnebago), and they can not be taken out on the open road-- indeed, the maximum allowable speed limit is 30 km/h (a tick under 19 mph), and there are a lot of scooters that have larger engines than this clown car. For the expense (the current version of this vehicle sells in England for the equivalent of $16K), lack of space, and near zero safety (not being classified as cars allows quadricycles to skirt safety regulations, and their bodies are largely plastic) this thing gives, you may as well just buy a good used car. Race car companies like Ferrari, Panoz and Maserati use the cachet of their on-track success to sell road vehicles. Formula One geeks like me remember that back in the day Ligier had a modest degree of success in the race arenas, which they parlayed into, um, this. Go figure. To find out more about the wonderful world of quadricycling, check out Ligier's website.
1 comment:
The great advantage to these cars here in France is for people who don't have or have lost their license. It's pretty easy to lose your license with all the automatic radars everywhere (and a point for even 1 km over the limit). You always know what has happened when you see someone drive up in one of these.
Post a Comment