What Do These Two Images Have In Common?: Cold Start

See that image up there? Of the road with the Isetta and those funny other little microcars? And see that Rubik’s Cube next to it? Well, there’s something that connects those two images, and I’m going to tell you what it is. Because you’re worth it, dammit. So get ready to start this day in the most Hungarian-tastic way possible. Also, that’s a hint right there.

This image has been on the internet an awful long time; I remember I used it as desktop wallpaper on some of the first laptops I ever had, back when Apple called their portable computers “PowerBooks” and they had track balls instead of touchpads and were made of plastic instead of metal, and all that other archaic crap. That image may have been one of the first non-pornographic images I ever downloaded from the internet, period.

What that image shows is a street in the Hungarian city of Székesfehérvár in 1956, during a May Day parade, and driving down that street are four microcars: an Isetta, which we already know well, one called the Úttörô (next to the Isetta) which was a privately-built microcar, and then two others commissioned by a joint project between The Ministry of Metallurgy and Machine Industry and the Vehicle Developing Institute in the hopes of providing Hungarians with cheap, decent transportation beyond Csepel motorbikes: the Balaton (up front), and the Alba Regia (at the rear).

Of these, I want to focus on the two state-sponsored cars, the Alba Regia and the Balaton. Really, I could write a whole lot more about these cars – and some people already have – but for now I just want to just limit things to that one strange connection I teased about in the top image.

These two cars were both developed in 1955, after extensive examination of other European microcars like the aforementioned Isetta, and also the Messerschmitt Kabinroller. Both cars used a two-stroke 250cc engine from the Pannonia motorbike, both mounted at the rear, and both went into reverse like the Messerschmitt: by starting the engine backwards.

The Alba Regia (on the left there) had conventional doors, while the Balaton opened from the roof; you can see a handle just above the center of the windshield in that picture.

Now, we’re finally getting to the connection I teased about: where the Alba Regia used a pretty conventional torsion bar suspension, the Balaton’s suspension was more interesting. It used rubber mounts for the suspension arms to absorb vibration and shock, and the particular setup designed for this rubber-based suspension came from the mind of an engineer named Ernô Rubik.

Rubik is better known for something else he created: a child, who bore the same name, and who developed something originally called the “Magic Cube” that eventually became famous as the Rubik’s Cube, the puzzle toy that has become an icon of the 1980s and is still around today.

Sadly, these two charming microcars never made it to production, and Hungary’s car needs had to be filled by East German Wartburgs and Trabants.

So, there you go: if you needed a way to link to the Rubik’s Cube to postwar Eastern Bloc microcars that never made it, you’re welcome.