Micro Microlino review

Quirky, fashion-focused microcar is a Citroën Ami-sized EV for Kia Picanto money

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The Citroën Ami is not a very good car, but then it's not really a car at all, rather a quadricycle. And besides, at less than £8000, it merits forgiveness of some of its more aggravating quirks and flaws. Despite its comparable dimensions and similar conception, you will find it distinctly harder to overlook any shortcomings of the new Microlino, which costs more than twice as much as its cubic contemporary.

Revealed way back in 2016 and launched in Europe in 2022, the Microlino is the first 'car' from Switzerland's Micro Mobility Systems, founded in the late 1990s by Wim Ouboter, creator of the original foldable, two-wheeled aluminium scooter. Did you know there was originally meant to be one of those in the boot of every Smart car? 

Anyway, that never worked out, and there's clearly not as much money in the scooter game as there used to be, so Wim's son Merlin has taken the company boldly into the EV game with a tiny urban runaround modelled on the 1950s Isetta.

Obvious stylistic influence from the era-defining 'bubble car' – famously built under licence by a nascent BMW – extends to a side-hinged front door, mirror-mounted headlights and a somewhat austere cockpit - although the Microlino's creators highlight the addition of a second rear wheel and, crucially, a reverse gear as key improvements.

The Microlino is now available in the UK now through specialist vehicle retailer Krazy Horse, which conveniently will also sell you a Morgan Aero 8 supercar or a 2.5-tonne, 5.7-litre V8-engined Ram 1500 pick-up truck. Why go anywhere else?

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It's optimistic about the Microlino’s performance in the UK, targeting around 1000 sales here next year, and notes healthy demand from areas outside of the main cities – particularly on the south coast, where it will make a lot of sense, you’d imagine, as a holiday-home runabout.

Motorhome owners have also emerged as a core demographic, to the extent that an Irish company is already designing a trailer specifically for the Microlino to be lugged along to the campsite, where it can be deployed for beach trips. But it will most naturally be at home as a second car for station runs and supermarket runs, with a footprint that lends itself to inter-urban errands and negotiating tight car parks - plus performance stats that stack up favourably against pretty much all of the same-sized alternatives, as you might hope, given the healthy premium it commands over each of them. 

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DESIGN & STYLING

Microlino panning side

The Microlino is not the sort of car in which you’d feel comfortable shouting along to your favourite song or picking your nose. Gaggles of schoolchildren roar with delight as you pass by, bus passengers shout down from their windows to ask what it is and even the most auto-apathetic of pedestrians will whip their phone out for a picture.

It's a resounding triumph of retro-futuristic design, Micro having matched the likes of the Renault 5 and Fiat 500 in successfully updating a universally recognisable silhouette for today’s roads without leaning too heavily on pastiche or parody. 

It's inevitably substantially larger than its spiritual forebear, at 2519mm long, 1473mm wide and 1501mm tall, but because everything – cars, buildings, people – has grown over the past 70 years, it still feels relatively miniscule. Interestingly, it’s only slightly bigger than the original Mini and 500 - and if you’ve ever driven one of them between two London buses, say, you will agree that it shouldn’t be much smaller.

Despite its attention-grabbing silhouette, it’s a fairly conventional technical proposition, with a single electric motor driving a pair of rear wheels (double the amount of the original Isetta) and a lithium ion battery mounted in the floor of a steel-and-aluminium monocoque - which its maker highlights as a first for the microcar segment. 

Otherwise, it's a thoroughly neatly designed vehicle, with clever touches like the mirror-mounted headlights and hidden door-release button (we will save you the embarrassment: it’s on the badge on the right-hand side).

INTERIOR

Microlino cabin from behind

There’s a pleasing sense of rightness about almost every fitting, fixture and feature in the Microlino’s cockpit. Swing open its front end and you’re met by a bench seat that can happily host two adults of average width and height, with enough adjustability in the base to comfortably accommodate the longer-legged driver.

The lack of adjustment in the steering column is annoying, but the canted wheel makes for a much more car-like driving position than in the Citroën Ami, for example, and the seats are comfortable enough for a couple of hours of rushing around without a break. 

Our test car had the premium interior, a £590 option that adds vegan upholstery and contrasting stitching that I would happily do without, and comes with a portable speaker that you can buy separately for £79. The neat elasticated bottle holder is standard fitment, as is the grab rail, onto which you can mount various ‘accessories’ - which basically just means a phone holder. You might feel short-changed by the lack of a dedicated central screen in a £20,000 car, but I find Apple CarPlay to be generally more intuitive and functional than the infotainment systems of most cars on sale, so this Dacia-esque solution essentially cuts out the middle man and reduces complexity. 

There is a tiny, extremely basic touchscreen ahead of the dashboard, which allows you to adjust the fan speed, the demister and so on, and it works very well. As does the digital driver display, which clearly shows your speed, drive mode and state of charge - everything you need at a glance and nothing more. 

Fit and finish is a bit more of a mixed bag. The main surfaces are trimmed in materials that are of a quality and durability that befits a premium product such as this, but the door panels are made of a flimsy-feeling and ill-fitting card-like material, and some of the physical controls – like the physical handbrake and rotary drive selector – feel a bit insubstantial, if not concerningly so. 

At a surprisingly decent 230 litres, the boot is on a par with some of the smallest full-sized cars on sale, so more than sufficient for a couple of small suitcases and a hold-all - or why not get really into the Micro spirit with a couple of fold-out scooters? Plus, because there’s no pesky rear seat in the way, you can easily reach behind and grab your wallet out of your backpack when you park up. 

Force of habit will have you reaching to the left for a non-existent handle when you come to get out, especially as the button to release the side-hinged front door is hidden somewhat counter-intuitively behind the grab rail - but I soon got used to it. Unlike in the original Isetta, the steering column is fixed to the floor, rather than the door, so you do have to thread yourself in a slightly undignified manner around it on entry, but the door is surprisingly manageable and electronically self-closes, so you don’t need to strain and wrestle with the leather pull strap in front of hordes of onlookers before you drive off.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

Microlino dynamic front quarter

The Microlino is not quick. Indeed, with a power-to-weight ratio of just 28bhp per tonne, it’s decidedly less nippy and urgent than the average full-sized electric car. But in the sorts of environment where you’d imagine it will be most often deployed (urban, congested, tight), its circa-5.0sec 0-30mph time means it's more than capable of keeping up with traffic, getting around buses and beating cyclists away from traffic lights. 

Acceleration is broadly smooth and composed – with no scrabbling from the rear tyres even under full load – and soundtracked by a fairly pervasive whine from the rear motor, which sounds a bit like a Thameslink train. It's noticeable, but not irritating. 

There is, bafflingly, a Sport mode, but it doesn’t seem to have any tangible effect on the way the Microlino gets off the mark. Still, it’s fun to press the button with the rocketship on it. 

We haven’t yet taken it out of town, but with a 56mph top speed and an acceleration curve that only really starts to tail off towards the very top end, we should think it will handle the odd short stretch of dual carriageway without too much fuss - which will be good news for the ‘surprising’ amount of coastal and rural residents who have registered their interest in the Microlino. 

The standard Microlino comes with a 10.5kWh battery for a claimed 110 miles of range (we reckon it’s more like 95 miles in the real world), but there’s also a Lite version that more closely rivals the Ami with a 28mph top speed and a 58-mile range, courtesy of a smaller battery that brings weight below 425kg to put it in the L6 category of quadricycle, which can be driven without a passenger on a moped licence. 

Neither version is capable of fast charging, which seems like a pretty major shortcoming for a vehicle so overtly geared towards use in high-density urban areas, where driveways are in short supply, but Micro reckons it needs only four hours on a three-pin to go from empty to full. Plus, it says, the average commuter drives only 70 miles per week, at an average speed somewhere around 20mph, so it’s a feasible one-charge-per-week solution.

RIDE & HANDLING

Microlino cornering front 2

I was relieved – if ultimately slightly underwhelmed – to discover that the Microlino feels, well… like a small car. Probably because it’s built like one, with its aluminium monocoque and MacPherson struts impressively soaking up the worst imperfections - and keeping things commendably quiet in the cabin. 

The short wheelbase and tiny 13in wheels mean cobbled streets are best avoided, and one particularly rough stretch of Tarmac had me bouncing and sliding around the cockpit, but generally, it’s barely distinguishable from the likes of the old Volkswagen e-Up and Honda E for noise, vibration and harshness. We will reserve full judgement on its, ahem, touring credentials until we’ve had it out on some faster and rougher roads, but first impressions are promising.

Less confidence-inspiring are the Microlino’s dynamic credentials, which are inevitably dented by its odd proportions, skinny wheels and general lack of any sporting pretensions whatsoever. The brakes are short on feel and responsiveness, the steering is light and lacking in feel and an enthusiastically approached corner will elicit body roll severe enough to conjur up visions of that buffoon who rolled an Ami in Monaco a couple of years back.  

This is disappointing, because while nobody is expecting to get their handling kicks in a vehicle of this nature, you might expect to be able to chuck it with abandon into hairpins and swerve around buses at full chat. But ultimately, it’s still a pretty fun thing to hare around in once you’ve got used to it, with the distinct advantage that you will rarely trouble the speed limit outside of the city.

VERDICT

Microlino parked door closed

The Microlino’s UK importer claims not to have benchmarked it against anything else, because there’s nothing obviously comparable on the market. Fair enough, but its size and shape will naturally line it up against the (admittedly scant few) electric microcars already out there, while its price brings it in line with some much larger and more practical alternatives.

In the context of what’s out there already with a similar footprint, the Microlino excels: it's infinitely more refined and capable than the Ami and rather more appealingly finished and attractive than the likes of the Silence S04 and XEV Yoyo (look them up). But it’s much, much more expensive than those same-sized alternatives, and if you consider that for similar money you could take home a new petrol-powered five-seat supermini with a larger boot, four doors and air conditioning, the case for the Microlino starts to evaporate. 

But there are better-finished sports cars than the Morgan Plus Four and more refined SUVs than the Ineos Grenadier; rationality can’t always win or we’d never buy anything interesting. Like those cars, it’s a fashion-focused and premium-priced alternative to the mainstays and one that manages to effectively marry utility with charisma. 

Frankly, as everything around it becomes increasingly amorphous or aggressive, the Microlino should be applauded just for being a fun little thing. Who cares if you’re stuck behind a bus and you’ve only got a few miles of range left? There’s a group of tourists with their cameras out over there, and you wouldn’t want to be all over Instagram with that frown on your face, would you?

Felix Page

Felix Page
Title: Deputy editor

Felix is Autocar's deputy editor, responsible for leading the brand's agenda-shaping coverage across all facets of the global automotive industry - both in print and online.

He has interviewed the most powerful and widely respected people in motoring, covered the reveals and launches of today's most important cars, and broken some of the biggest automotive stories of the last few years.