Tiny car from 1964: the Peel P50

(Image from Diseno-Art)

What's not to love (other than the fact that you'll die if you drive it on the road) about this tiny car from the 1960s, the Peel P50? Link | Company film about the Peel 50

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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ijsbrand

BBC’s TV show Top Gear “tested” this car as well, in the October 28 2007 episode.
Trencher

That was a great segment. I loved watching him drive it through the office. That had the wife and I in stitches.
Halloween Jack

So that’s what Shriners drive when it’s raining…
Flying Squid

You wouldn’t have to drive it on the road. I’m sure it does great on the sidewalk.

p.s. I want one!
cajunfj40

@Frauenfelder

I take issue with your parenthetical statement:

“(other than the fact that you’ll die if you drive it on the road)”

While it is a fact that in a car to car collision the smaller car usually suffers more, I do not believe that it is automatically the case that you’ll die if you drive this particular vehicle on the road. Besides that, this particular car (per Wikipedia article here) was initially designed as a town car and has a top speed of about 38mph. This is very similar to current U.S. “Neighborhood Electric Vehicle” legal limits of 25-35mph top speed. This vehicle would be illegal on most U.S. inter-state and intra-state freeways, due to minimum speed limits (generally 40mph) on most of them. At the lower speeds involved on city streets and the like, this vehicle doesn’t appear to be any more dangerous to drive than other legal vehicles. That it has three wheels may require it’s registration as a motorcycle in some States in the U.S. The small engine capacity and low speed capability may also downgrade it to “moped” registration status in similar States, which restricts it from freeways as well.

Given how unique-looking this car is, it may even enjoy a better accident record than other more ordinary cars because it stands out more, and thus drivers may be more likely to see it and less likely to hit it.

Don’t mind me, I just can’t understand the general U.S. disdain for small cars given today’s fuel prices… and I want one of these too!
-cajun
cpn

Check out some great pix of the P50s and Tridents when loads of them went back to Peel for a reunion:

Peel Cars
Mark Frauenfelder

Don’t get me wrong — I love this little car! Here in LA, it would be run over by a Cayenne, faux Hummer, or Escalade in a matter of minutes.
magiclightbox

Here is the Top Gear review on Youtube.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HYtro7PnBA8

It’s really funny. And he does drive it on the road – through central London in fact!
andie

check out the micro car museum, loads and loads of weird mini cars. Nice virtual tour and all! =)

http://www.microcarmuseum.com/virtualtour.html

/Andie
Topherczen

That white haired guy is Lane of the lane auto museum in Nashville TN. He’s got a metric assload of mini cars and three wheeled cars of all sorts.

http://lanemotormuseum.org/
Vanwall

There was room for his ass and a gallon of gas, but hopefully he fared better than The Man From Boston. They had a slightly larger ‘luxury’ model, the Trident, (what a great name!), that had a bubble canopy. They look even more amazingly small in real life. I’ll stick with my Bond Bug, a larger, ‘safer’, 3-wheeler.