urbanism
What cyclecars can teach us about the future of urban mobility
June 10, 2025
If you’ve ever watched The Repair Shop, you’ll know Tim Gunn as the softly spoken bicycle whisperer, restoring antique cycles with reverence and care. But behind his workshop, Gunn & Co, lies a lesser-known passion: the curious and compelling world of cyclecars.Cyclecars, for the uninitiated, were an early attempt at bridging the gap between bicycles and cars. Light, often homemade, and charmingly simple, they were the original "micro-mobility" solution - though nobody called it that in 1912. These were machines with bicycle DNA: slender frames, minimal bodies, engines smaller than some modern lawnmowers, and a spirit of pragmatism.