I’ve dragged my kid on plenty of car stuff in his still-new life, and while his entry into teenagehood has cooled his ardor for cars a bit, there’s still a strong bedrock of car-geekery in there. When he was little, though, he was charmingly open and vocal about his interest in cars, and I think because of the strange car diet I subjected him to, his tastes ended up being pretty offbeat.
For example, for the longest time his favorite car was a Denzel, which is a pretty obscure choice. It’s a great choice, too – they’re fascinating little Volkswagen-based cars that are like an alternate universe Porsche 356, with, somehow, a cuter face.
Here, I even made a video about these a couple years back at Laguna Seca:
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The kid’s obscure car-interests would come up in other ways, too. Once, when he was really little, like five or so, still in kindergarten, his teacher reached out to me to ask me what, exactly, Otto had drawn in a picture he did on the back of one of his little worksheet things. She described it, but it made no sense. Then, I saw it, and knew immediately:
“Oh yeah,” I told her, “that’s a Peel P50.” I said it like she’d have any idea what the hell I was talking about, which, in hindsight, was a mistake.
Yes, Otto has always loved the tiny little car built on the Isle of Man, and if you know what you’re looking for, that’s exactly what that is up there. We’re seeing it from the front: central cylopean headlamp, three wheels, narrow body, driving down a highway with a big yellow stripe.
I asked Otto this morning what car I should do for Cold Start, and, true to form, he suggested the Peel P50.
I happened to come across this flyer for what most people say is the smallest production car ever, even if those production numbers are just around 50 cars. That still counts!
I love a car ad that boldy shouts “Speeds to 40” like that’s a triumph. The “Over 100 miles per gallon” is no joke, either. Some of the claims I can easily get behind, like “PARKING PROBLEMS SOLVED,” because when your car can fit in a closet, those problems are solved. “ARMCHAIR SEATING” is maybe debatable, but “SALOON CAR PROTECTION” I think can only be true if we’re talking about protection from raindrops and maybe the occasional pigeon.
I get Otto’s love of the Peel P50; it’s basically a motorized, enclosed chair. Its tiny size blurs the lines between inside and outside, as this fantastic picture of the prototype shows:
What an incredible publicity shot! This feels like it’s on the set of a talk show or something. It’s reminiscent of the famous Top Gear Peel P50 segment, of course. I really admire this woman’s chutzpah to agree to meet that dude for coffee and just drive the fudge right into the restaurant and park at the table. That’s how you make a mothergrabbing entrance.
These other prototype Peel P50 pictures are pretty great, too. Like this one of a woman with her two pieces of luggage:
You really could drag one of those up some stairs, if you needed to. I’d like to imagine she checked it as baggage on a train or something, and just pulled it off, ready to explore some new city in style.
Or this guy, pulling it onto a sidewalk so he can stop and check and see if Lucy yanked the football away from that round-headed kid again.
I think what I like about the tone of these pictures is the not-so-subtle implication that, should you decide to buy one of these tiny cars, then rules no longer apply to you.
Drive wherever the hell you want, park wherever you want, you’re a Peel owner, laws can’t touch you! I love it! What an intoxicating idea! The cheat code for society is a tiny one-person car!
Otto, I get it.
How have I never heard about the Denzel before: it’s adorable! 😀
Though I don’t have any desire to own a Peel, the ads alone make me appreciate their existence.
PS: the brunette in those ads reminds me of the British actress Jacqueline Hill, who played Barbara Wright in the earliest incarnation of Dr. Who.
Otto has fun tastes in cars. A chip off the block for sure. Congrats Jason!
The ad’s claim of “ample parcel space” only counts if the P50 IS the parcel. You could tuck that thing away anywhere.
Awfully early in the morning (for me, at least) and only just now having my coffee but when I was scrolling down the list of articles I thought it looked like the thumbnail picture for this article was actually showing Jackie Kennedy and Robert Oppenheimer having tea. That’d have been one heck of a conversation to eavesdrop on, lol.
Also, if this were honest ads, there would be a big blue cloud of two stroke exhaust in the tearoom scene.
Whoa, stop there!
Is this one of those things only I can see again?
Some of those cars have the two wheels in front. Like they fitted the top backward onto the chassis. How did the packaging work on both versions? Where they all rear wheel drive? Was there a differential?
I DEMAND MORE UNNECESSARY OBSCURE INFORMATION!
Most of these promo images feature the pre-production prototype with the 1+2 wheel layout; production P50s were all 2+1 wheels like the one on TopGear. I don’t know what the prototype’s transmission/drivetrain was like but the production ones used a moped engine so I’d guess they used a moped drivetrain to the single rear wheel as well (seeme likely since like a bike it has no Reverse gear).
How could any kid not be fascinated by a micro car?
Everyone should see a Peel!
CBS did a special story on a micro car museum near Atlanta.
They drove into a grocery store in one and were shopping from the car!
It’s unfortunate that the top and tea party images look like her left breast is hanging so much lower than her right. I’m sure it’s just how the dress hung on her. At least I hope so.
How about its larger sibling the Peel Trident with its Jetsons style plastic dome?
My son’s car interests are more prosaic. In Oregon driving a Toyota HiAce is almost normal.
Clarkson!
The first time I heard of the P50 was playing Forza Horizon 4. I have a drag tune and can get it up to 168 mph. And lawd help me if I start to fishtail at that speed. The easiest way to recover is set the controller down until it slides/crashes to a stop.
I think I almost immediately swapped a 600cc superbike engine into mine when I got it in Forza Horizon Whichever One. It was utterly uncontrollable and borderline useless, but I just liked zipping around the map in oddball vehicles more than doing any actual racing, so it worked out well. I liked going from that to my ridiculously-tuned Super Duty.
I loved turning up to the online bits in a Peel. There’d be a bunch of kids in garish hypercars, and me in a ridiculously fast Peel, usually falling over at every corner.
I painted mine in Forza to look like a one-eyed Minion from Despicable Me
Mine looks like a Li’l Tykes car. 🙂
Your kid has indubitably excellent taste in things automotive.
Denzel had some delightfully minimalist and brutalist logos:
https://cdn2.adrianflux.co.uk/wp-cult-classics/uploads/2020/03/denzel.jpg
and
http://photos.imageevent.com/mrokrasa/porscheenginebuilds/denzel/huge/DSCN7098.JPG
Funny that somehow the ‘E’s still read as ‘E’ despite looking like ‘C’ in this emblem on the fan shroud of that Denzel-tuned VW engine.
Having met Otto, I think he’s onto something here. If the generally dubious media is to be believed, young people are not getting married or raising families, nor do they have the income levels that support buying new cars. The P50 might be the perfect car for Otto’s generation!
My 15 year-old car-crazy son has had the opportunity to sit in and ride in a variety of exotics and supercars over the years, but the one car that’s at the top of his list and has eluded him so far is the Peel P50. He knows there’s one in the Galpin collection, but he doesn’t want to just look at the P50, he wants to sit inside.
The Lane Motor Museum has one.
While this wasn’t a Peel P50, during a guided basement tour at the Lane the docents had some of the visitors (including myself, of course, lol) sit inside an Isetta. Seriously cool!
You & your kid might get lucky with the timing of a visit to the Lane with the optional basement tour when the Peel P50 is downstairs in the basement and available thusly.
I was fortunate enough to visit the Lane when I was in the Nashville area on a business trip- but Galpin is less than 90 minutes away, so that remains the closest and possibly best option.
“Or this guy, pulling it onto a sidewalk so he can stop and check and see if Lucy yanked the football away from that round-headed kid again.”
If he wasn’t checking on Peanuts, then he was probably checking on Dennis the Menace. No, not the American Dennis the Menace but the Scottish Dennis the Menace: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f9/Dennis_and_Gnasher_portrayed_by_Nigel_Parkinson.jpg
(Yeah, freakishly enough both Menaces made their debut on the opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean the exact same day, March 12, 1951.)
That’s pretty wild!
It’s a bit like Heath Robinson and Rube Goldberg, who were both cartoonists, working on opposite sides of the Atlantic at the same time, who both loved to draw ridiculously over-complicated machines. To the extent that both became household names in their respective countries, to describe that sort of machine.
Mostly unrelated – that top image reminds of how terrible actors are with pretending their tea/coffee/beverage cups aren’t empty. Why are they generally all so terrible at this?
Ironically, one thing a Peel cannot do is peel out.
Or go in reverse if memory serves.
True.
If Emma Peel were driving one and she exited the vehicle, would that count?
If I didn’t live in a very rural area of a very rural state I’d buy one of the new production Peel P50s.
This is the funniest Cold Start I remember reading. Genuine Chuckles
The Peel P50 was the inspiration for the Clarkson P45.
And we all know that the Clarkson P45 is the greatest car… in the world.
(I don’t know if they ever explained the joke in the show, but in the UK a ‘P45’ is the name of the tax form you’re given when you leave a job. So, if you’re sacked you are ‘given your P45’. I think the US equivalent would be ‘pink slip’)
And a pink slip, in addition to being “walking papers” it’s also used as the term for an automobile title.
P50 is better for admiring Fiona Bruce’s bottom, though.