If you’re a sitcom fan, you must have caught at least a few episodes of Family Matters, one of the longest-running sitcoms of its time. Family Matters ran on ABC from September 22, 1989, to May 9, 1997. For its last year, it moved to CBS, running from September 19, 1997, to July 17, 1998. At the time, it was one of the few sitcoms with most of the cast being of African-American origin.
The show revolved around the Winslows, a middle-class family of African-American origin living in Chicago, Illinois. Steve Urkel is a character on the show who appears in the 12th episode of the first season as a nerdy young boy who takes Laura Winslow out on a date and is madly in love with her. Played by Jaleel White, Steve Urkel was supposed to be a one-off character, but his oddball antics started gaining favor with the audience and he became a season regular beginning season two.
Steve Urkel’s “Clown Car”
Steve Urkel is given a microcar by his Uncle Cecil, and not only was he given the car, but he was also given 50 bucks by Cecil to take the car away. Of course, at the time, Urkel did not know how to drive, so he gets driving lessons from Carl Winslow in an episode titled Driving Carl Crazy.
In the series, Steve claims the car drives really fast, but to be honest, it can’t, and you only have to look at the car to know why. And yet, he manages to get into an accident with it too and has it repaired. In one of the last appearances of the car, in the Hot Rods To Heck episode, Urkel, being the brainy nerd that he is had tuned the car to “supersonic” speeds.
Yet Steve Urkel is often made fun of when he drives the “clown car”. In a strange twist in the series, Steve Urkel makes a “transformation chamber” where his nerd genes are suppressed and his cool genes brought to the fore, and he becomes Stefan Urquelle, still driving the same car. But no one makes fun of Stefan Urquelle in the car.
Presenting The BMW Isetta
The BMW Isetta began life as the Iso Isetta. An Italian firm, Iso SpA, owned by Renzo Rivolta, decided to build a small car for mass sales. By 1952, the engineers had designed a small car, micro, in fact, using the engine of the Iso Moto 200 and dubbed it the Isetta.
At launch, the car created a sensation. It looked like a little bubble on three-wheels and was tiny. Dimensions wise, it was 7.5-feet long and 4.5-feet wide and looked like an egg. There was only one door, quite weird, and it was in the front. Basically, the entire front end, with the steering wheel and the instrument panel swung out on a hinge to let in two occupants, and perhaps a small child in sit in dubious comfort on a single bench seat. Behind the seat lay a storage space with a spare wheel. In event of a collision, passengers could escape through the fabric sunroof, and this is where the ventilation also came from although there was an optional heater.
Later, BMW decided to make and market the Isetta and entered into an agreement with Iso SpA. The BMW Isetta debuted in April 1955 and came with a BMW single-cylinder four-stroke 247-cc motorcycle engine that made all of 12 horses and had a top speed of 53 mph. While the car looked the same, BMW remade it, enough to make sure no parts of the BMW Isetta could be interchanged with the Iso Isetta. In May 1962, production of the BMW Isetta finally ceased with 161,728 units being built and sold.
Steve Urkel’s BMW Isetta
The BMW Isetta that Steve Urkel drove was a 1960 model with silver air dams in the front and is red and white and adorable. That said; it had been altered a bit for a larger cabin size to seat Jaleel White and his castmates.
The car is now in Jaleel White’s garage because he was allowed to keep it as part of his contract once the series ended. Apparently, it still runs and is in pristine condition. It remained a strange little car but as it is with all things strange and classic, it too is getting a modern makeover! But don’t take out word for it, check out the new modern BMW Isetta, in its EV avatar.
