The name leaves no doubt: the Urbi is a small vehicle designed for urban use. Franco Sbarro describes the Urbi as "a kind of four-wheeled scooter". The students at Espace Sbarro were asked, as Franco Sbarro puts it, "to design a vehicle for the city center. But since an electric car is a road cripple anyway, we had to reserve a place for it where its shortcomings could be turned into assets. So, use it in historic centers, green zones, large hotel parks or as a golf cart. It wouldn't have had a license plate, not even a windscreen wiper. The idea was to make a few of these vehicles available just about everywhere, on a self-service basis for those who needed them."
It's worth remembering that this was 1993, a time when ecological concerns surrounding the automobile were not really a priority for manufacturers or public authorities. The idea of self-service electric vehicles to reduce pollutant emissions in densely populated urban areas was ahead of its time and didn't catch on. "We needed to get the political authorities moving, to get people thinking outside the box," laments Franco Sbarro.

A far cry from the Monster built by Sbarro in 1987. The polyester hull forms a single unit, with the seats and interior molded directly to the body rather than attached. No doors, no side windows, just a windscreen for protection. Curiously, there are no headlights either, which raises the question of road homologation.