During the 1950s and 1960s automobile use and ownership in France grew consistently, and much of this growth came at the expense of motorcycle producers. Long lens photographs appearing in L’Auto-Journal in December 1961 showed the results of a serious Motobécane project to fight back by developing a small “quadricycle” format automobile. One of the pictures showed the Motobécane prototype on a boulevard near the company’s plant and the Porte de Valette being overtaken by a Renault 4CV: the little Renault looked uncharacteristically large and the Motobecane, positioned between the Renault and a Paris bus, looked barely larger than a child’s pedal car. In fact the prototype was 2730 mm long and 1180 mm wide, which was enough to accommodate two people side by side in a fashionably boxy little body: from the side, at first glance, it was hard to tell which end was which: however, the cut-out sections on each side covered with a dark coloured fabric "door" was angled towards the front of the car.