A farewell to small cars, the industrial icons that put Europe on wheels

Placing a Peugeot 208FFCVEUSUV, Europe’s bestselling car last year, next to a Ford -150, its American counterpart, is like comparing a Chihuahua to a Great Dane. Both have four wheels and typically serve the same purpose: to ferry a single driver from one place to another. Beyond that they have little in common. The -150 weighs over two tonnes, twice as much as the lithe Peugeot. The driver in the American pickup truck sits a half-metre higher than the tarmac-scraping Frenchman in his family compact. Forget the flat bed attached to the back of the Ford—its interior alone feels roomier than the entire European car. A Parisian driver ever-confident of his parking skills might well attempt to squeeze his vehicle inside the cab of the American behemoth.When it comes to motoring, Europeans long felt that size did not matter. The continent was woven together by poky cars powered by engines that would have been shamed by American lawnmowers. Yet what European autos lacked in cylinders they made up for in va va voom. The Fiat 500, Volkswagen Beetle, Austin Mini, Citroën 2 and even the drab Trabants of East Germany all became pop-culture icons, as core to the idea of what Europe stood for as Nouvelle Vague cinema or riding on a Vespa while smoking a cigarette. Alas these industrial gems are heading to the scrapheap. Since the start of the century cars sold in the have gained over 200kg on average—a third of an original Fiat 500. They have grown taller, wider and longer while legally carrying no more passengers. Sport-utility vehicles (s), hunks of automotive manhood tailor-made for the American plains, increasingly rule cityscapes from Helsinki to Athens.