Microdot (car)

In 1979 William Towns collaborated with prototype vehicle builders at Mallalieu Engineering, Wootton, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, with a view to limited production. The Microdot prototype, built by William Towns on a cut-down Austin Mini chassis, was given opening doors and a 6-inch (150 mm) longer nose, to accommodate the aluminium Reliant car engine, one of the smallest and lightest UK car engines then available, instead of the original hybrid proposal. Mallalieu Engineering was best known for making Bentley Specials, the Barchetta and Oxford, based on the Mark 6 Bentley.

The engineers had a target of 100 miles per Imperial gallon. Under the prototype label of "Matrix" a business plan, it was proposed by Mallalieu's managing director Noel Hodson, to sell several hundred "Chelsea" Microdots a year to POSSFUND, the venture-capital arm of the Post Office pension fund, then one of the largest funds in the world, managed by Ralph Quartano.

The recession of the early 1980s, and the growth in small economical cars such as the Austin Metro and Ford Fiesta, stopped the hybrid-drive project. Mallalieu Microdot (company number 01504509) was dissolved on 23 June 1987 and Mallalieu Engineering (company number 01215691) was dissolved in 1989,[3] and the project disappeared.

Designers from film special-effects studios in London, who had created the original Star Wars spaceship interiors, created "alive" interior cockpit designs and motor industry experts from Lucas and Ever Ready advised on batteries, power-trains and instruments. Relying on 8-track stereo tape recordings by celebrities, it was planned that a Microdot would "talk" to its owner.

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  Together with the Minissima
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  Interior
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  Dashboard

• Heritage Motor Centre

• Media related to Microdot vehicles at Wikimedia Commons