When you think of an ideal small car, your mind may go to something like Fiat 500the Chevrolet Bolt or a little neat VW Golf. But these modern city cars look monstrous when compared to the world’s smallest car: Peel P50.
Originally sold from 1962 to 1965, Peel P50 is officially the smallest production car All Time. Measuring just 54 inches long, 41 inches wide and 47 inches tall, it has space for one person, not many others.
“I remember seeing a documentary and it was narrated by John Peel and it started with the original Peel cars,” said Jim Buggle, co-founder of British firm P50 Cars.
“There is something about seeing Peel P50 as a child that excites me. I remember going to school the next day and drawing a picture and saying ‘I want to do these things.’
A few decades later and that’s just what Buggles are doing. With business partner Craig Wilson, the pair Established P50 Automobile Company to create brand new, absolute replicas of the world’s smallest car. From their workshop in south-east London, the duo will assemble the standard P50 as well as a convertible Spyder variant.
You can buy a brand new Peel as a kit to assemble at homeor as a fully assembled vehicle that you can drive straight from the company’s new factory.
P50 Cars recently moved to a new location where there is ample space for the company to ramp up production as orders pour in from around the world. When I visited the UK shop this summer, the cars were being assembled for delivery to India, Australia and Qatar. The microcar maker has shipped vehicles to every continent except South America and Antarctica.
“This will be the production line,” Buggle said as he gestured to one side of the industrial unit. “We have this space for shells here, then next to what we call the filthy zone. That’s where all the welding and machining takes place. We also have a spray booth and fiberglass and all that. “
Walking around the area feels like a full-fledged car factory, but on a much smaller scale. Buggle and Wilson are still developing at the new location, but there’s an area filled with fiberglass P50 bodies and stacked shelves with tiny motors, tiny wheels, and miniature brake assemblies.
In the neighboring unit, there are all the necessary tools to machine the components that go into each car.
“This is one of the brake hubs,” said Buggle. “It is machined all the way to the side and then we anodize it in-house. So we managed to fit a disc assembly in six-inch wheels. ”
With the new factory up and running, Buggle and Wilson hope to build 100 cars a year, a number that will be higher than the original company’s output. Only 50 of the original Peel P50s were built within 3 years, with around 27 believed to have survived to this day.
Buggle said: “No load. “So we basically have as many photos as we can…. We try to get a set of molds, basically cases copied from the original. They’re not perfect, but we put a lot of effort into perfecting them and tweaking a few things. ”
The mold is now used to build the new P50 body. Careful testing of the original hardware and a series of photos of vintage P50s helped the pair recreate every other component to assemble the microcar. So many of the parts are custom-built in-house, from the custom taillights (modernized with LEDs) to the reproduction of the horn on the nose. It was a meticulous process for the couple.
Buggle said: “It got to the point where, even now, when I see pictures of our cars that I know are ours, sitting next to an original car, I have to take a photo of them. few pictures.
Getting to this stage is not an easy feat. It is not surprising that suppliers of parts for the world’s smallest car are few and far between. Usually, when a couple thinks they’ve found the perfect ingredient, it quickly stops production.
“One of the biggest problems we’ve had over the years is, when you finally get a piece that’s going to be good, then suddenly they don’t do it anymore,” says Wilson. “It happened so many times. We seem to have a knack for picking something we like and then they don’t do it anymore.”
This bad luck has come with the modern corporate offering of engines, lights, brakes and even wheels. It was this contradiction that inspired the duo to produce so many parts in-house.
So how do you make a P50?
Buggle explains: “We started with making hanging arms and things like that. “We’ll do everything in batches, so once we have all the parts we can start assembling them.”
Over the years, the couple assembled each car into a carefully choreographed ballet.
“We have found that the best way to do that is to put [the car] Buggle said. “You just have enough reach to hold things together without two people.
“Then, when the wheel was up and the engine was up, we put it on the wheel and worked on the interior.”
On top of that, there are changes, customizations, and options. Customers can choose to purchase the P50 fully assembled or as a kit, and the company offers either electric or petrol powertrains. From there, you choose your paint color, upholstery, and a host of other options.
“A lot of people just come in and think they can get one off the shelf and that’s it,” says Wilson. “But they have quite a few custom-made things, that’s all.”
Who on earth is buying the new Peel P50?
The simple answer is, a lot of people. The P50 revival began when Jeremy Clarkson tried to spend a day driving one on an old episode of BBC Top gear. With so few originals around, the best option for most people is a copy.
“If I had a pound for every time someone said, ‘I bet I can’t make it,’ I would make a lot of money,” said the P50 replica owner, and all around microcar fansIan Leonard.
To date, Leonard has owned two P50 copies of Buggle and Wilson, as well as an original from the 1960s.
Leonard’s obsession with supercars began when he was growing up. A neighbor introduced him to Messerschmitta German three-wheeled microcar produced between 1955 and 1964.
“When I reached a certain age, I thought to myself: I will set a goal and I want a Porsche 911 or a Messerschmitt. And I bought myself a Messerschmitt and it really is,” Leonard told me. “I’ve never looked back and the obsession has grown from there.”
Now, Leonard is in the process of building what he calls a “big garage” to house his microcar collection, which now includes a Peel P50 replica, a Peel Trident (Sports convertible, Jetsons-esque version of the P50), Messerschmitt, Messerschmitt Cabriolet and Brütsch Mopetta. And after controlling and possessing both the original and clone Peels, Leonard discovered a few differences between the two.
“I mean, at the end of the day, the difference is build quality, really,” says Leonard. “The early ones were pretty flimsy. They are very, very raw. They are not nice to drive and they vibrate. I mean, it’s all vibrating, but Jim and Craig put a lot of thought into making the driving experience that little bit better.”
So, Leonard said he’s happy to take his P50 out to hang out in Lancashire, in the north of England, where he lives.
“I drive it all the time,” he said. “I went up on Rivington, there it was 12,000 feet above sea level. It really struggles with hills, but because it has a modern four-stroke engine, you can really turn around and not have to worry. Because it’s very modernd mechanical and everything is very well built, I know it will go up all these hills. It would ramp them up at 20 mph and people might struggle to get past you, but it worked. “
So does this mean that the new replica Peels being built by Buggle and Wilson are an ideal everyday solution for the modern driver?
“You get used to it,” Leonard said. “You walk into it and it’s a bit odd, people are constantly looking at you, but it’s very, very easy to drive.”
For about $16,000, can you see yourself transitioning to a microcar lifestyle? First, you’ll get your hands on a hand-crafted, bespoke reproduction of a (small) piece of 1960s motoring history. As other companies revive something historic from 1960s, they used to charge several hundred thousand for their efforts.
