The whole nose swings open together — windshield, headlights, steering column — so getting in means walking up and stepping down, not climbing around a door frame.

A modern-production revival of the 1950s Isetta bubble car: one door swallows the entire front end and swings open so you step straight down into the driver’s seat.

Micro, the Swiss company better known for the Micro Kickboard scooter, sketched the concept with Zurich’s university of applied sciences in 2016 and now builds it in Turin, Italy. The Isetta shape is a deliberate lift from BMW’s 1950s original, but everything under the panels is new: an electric motor, a lithium battery, and a steel-and-aluminum safety cell.

The party trick is the door. The whole nose — glass, headlights, steering wheel — hinges open as one piece, so there’s no reaching around a frame, just walking up and stepping in. It seats two, adds a sunroof, and still finds 230 liters of trunk behind the seats.

Three battery sizes — 5.5, 10.5, or 15 kWh — give 93, 177, or 228 km of range, and the car weighs 496 to 530 kg depending on which one’s fitted. All three charge from an ordinary household socket in two to five and a half hours. Top speed is 90 km/h (56 mph), and Swiss prices start around CHF 18,000 to buy, or CHF 136 a month to lease.

Two corrections to the find. “Tops out around city speeds” undersells it — 90 km/h beats most city limits, and the real ceiling isn’t the motor but the paperwork: the Microlino is registered as an L7e quadricycle, a class kept off highways no matter what it’s capable of. More relevant if you’re clicking through hoping to buy one: by Micro’s own account, “the Microlino is only available in Europe” — it isn’t approved for sale or road use in the US, with no launch date announced.