Compact Car (redirected from Compact cars)

Compact Car 

(in Russian, malolitrazhnyi avtomobil) the conventional designation for passenger cars with an engine displacement of 0.85-1.5 liters and a weight of 700-1,000 kg. Compact cars are designed for personal and official use (medical and postal service).

Modern compact cars usually have forward, longitudinal placement of the engine, with rear-wheel drive, although there are also arrangements with forward transverse or rear engine placement (in which the engine is combined with the transmission and rear-axle drive), with front-wheel or rear-wheel drive, respectively. Compact cars are usually equipped with four-cylinder, four-cycle water-cooled gasoline engines (rear-mounted engines are often air-cooled) with a power of 44-59 kilowatts (kW), or 60-80 hp. The frame-supported body seats four to five; maximum speed is 140-150 km/hr; acceleration from 0 to 100 km/hr (manual transmission) on a straight, level road with an improved surface (with the driver and one passenger) is about 20 sec. Average fuel consumption is 7-9 liters per 100 km.

In the USSR, compact cars are produced by the Lenin Komsomol Moscow Automotive Plant and the Izhevsk Machine-building Plant (Moskvich-412) and by the Volga and Zaporozh’e automotive plants (the Zhiguli VAZ-2101 [foreign trade name,. Lada] and Zaporozhets ZAZ-968). Abroad, compact cars are manufactured in great numbers in Japan and in the European countries.