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.
If a teen kid takes interest in your interests and asks you to do something related to that, you do it. Those opportunities are rare. Also I’ll read anything about the P50.
Re the brochure pic with the P50 lady and the guy at the table, in increasing order of certitude
Interesting that in the first image it has the 2 wheels up front, but in all the other images the 2 wheels are in the back.
All the ones I’ve seen have the 2 wheels in front. I never realized they made any the other way around. Looking online the only images I can find showing 1 front wheel are the same images used in this article.
That’s a good observation. I wonder if the OG design had the single front wheel. Then they drove one and found out the max cornering speed was 2 mph before rollover, and decided to put the second wheel at the front.
The front end definitely looks massively different between the 2front and 1front versions…
Makes sense. They wouldn’t be able to fit a 2 wheel steering axle in the space formerly occupied by 1 wheel.
I don’t think the single front wheel would have worked too well at all with such a teeny tiny wheelbase.
Only the P50 prototype has the single wheel up front. For the production model they changed the layout.
By the way: That single prototype resides in a London living room.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=23CDcgQYq8s
Thanks for that. Suspicion confirmed.
At least that gent on the park bench had enough sense to exit his Peel before lighting up and hotboxing himself to death.
To my eye, the guy in the top shot has a Ralph Nader vibe and is impolitely suggesting that this vehicle is unsafe by just existing, let alone at any speed.
If it has Mrs. Peel in it, I’m in.
Someone will be avenged!
Thank goodness Mrs Peel was as flexible as she was.
After a British company had a series of problems with sexual harassment, female staff were issued a Peel P50 to provide a defensive redoubt should some colleague get inappropriate. Just withdraw into the shell and shut the door, but the meeting can be continued. If necessary, just drive away.
/s
Three words: Peel racing series
“ARMCHAIR SEATING”. So easy to get in and out of, you know.
IIRC lifting up like in the picture was the way to make it move backwards, because it didn’t have a reverse gear. You just grab it, lift the front, and push it backwards.
Oh, that makes sense. Put it in neutral, suitcase it into place,
and hopefully be able to get back in to put it in gear so that it doesn’t roll down a hill and into a tree (does that ever happen?).And the car weighs only 130 lbs, same as my dog, so that means it could be dragged up a ramp onto a pickup or into an RV.Exactly. And please don’t let it roll it down a hill into a tree. These things are precious! (There aren’t that many of them.)
So in the final sentence you’re saying you can see the ap-Peel?
I’m more a fan of the Messerschmidt. It’s longer and lower. My DIY electric velomobile is basically an updated version of it, but shrunken down to fit just one person and more aerodynamically streamlined. Completed with roll cage and body it will weigh around 120 lbs, and have 20+ kW and 500+ Nm available with AWD. But it’s sized much closer to the Peel P50 than the Messerschmidt.
Microcars as so damned fun… It doesn’t take much power to make them hoonable. With the right design, using an ICE engine, 4-digit MPG fuel economy also becomes possible. The Peel P50 is a fuel pig compared to what it could have been.
Either that woman standing with the suitcase is the original actor that played Big Bird or there were multiple sizes of this car made.
Gwendoline Christie’s mum perhaps?
I was thinking that she bore a striking resemblance to the Chicken Lady from The Kids in the Hall
This is the car Clarkson drove the the shuttered BBC hq, right? That episode and the Reliant Robin one were the pinnacle of automotive humor for me and my kids.
Yes (Clarkson drove a Peel 50 inside the BBC offices)
The Peel P50 always made me think about the great Stan Mott’s Cyclops stories in Road & Track magazine.
Taking a P50 into the cafe for a date does make some sense. After all, if the datye starts to go badly, or he turns out to be a creep, she can just slam the door and peel right out…
Consider yourself fortunate. If I was in your position, I believe the exchange with my kid would have gone more like this:
Me: What should car should I write about for the Cold Start?
My Kid: You should write about the Citroen’s Bofa.
Me: The Bofa what?
My Kid: Bofa DEEZ NUTS.
“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.”
The perfect vehicle for the traveling sovereign citizen.
I’m about as far from a sov cit as you can get, but if I had one of these…
I built my own microcar out of a recumbent trike. It’s legally a “bicycle”.
On the other side of the scale, the 6-person pedal-powered Shamancycle is legally also a bicycle. I could not find any laws concerning towing a “bicycle”. It isn’t a trailer, it’s a bicycle!
https://photos.google.com/search/CgtzaGFtYW5jeWNsZSINCgtzaGFtYW5jeWNsZSjT9LrrsjM%3D/photo/AF1QipPFoICWdswn3Qop3eGLauRIEq2fBZIGQoxKH-sY
I’ve never seen the version with the single wheel up front. You learn something new all the time.
Same here, I thought it was AI slop for a second.
Only the P50 prototype has the single wheel up front. For the production model they changed the layout.
By the way: That single prototype resides in a London living room.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=23CDcgQYq8s
These always looked silly fun, but with all the hassle, cost, and potential danger, it always felt like it’d be easier to walk. Or take the Tube. Or the bus. Or even a golf cart (er, “buggy” in the parlance of our former overlords)
But I still admire the effort and the upstream swim.
Are we not going to mention how the prototype shots show a single front wheel and dual rears, the exact opposite of the production model?
For YEARS I tried to import either one of these or a Reliant Robin. Finances always holding me back. I still want one.
We need more “water resistant scooter” options in transportation.
My dad was a Citroen nut, and that seems to have wildly affected my life, probably for the better? For the weirder, certainly.
“…even if those production numbers are just around 50 cars. That still counts!”
Not according to Motorsport UK, anything lower than 1000 cars isn’t a production car. That ruined my plan of finally winning a class trophy with my Europa S (458 made).
I vote that The Autopian buy a P50 and make Adrian daily it so we can live vicariously through him.
I’ll also take a Reliant Robin as a secondary option.
Can he still fit in one? was my first thought. But then I remember, Clarkson did.
It probably depends on your definition of “fit.”