Build Your Own Smallest Car In The World With This Peel P50 DIY Kit

The street-legal kit car is available with a variety of engine choices, including electric.

By: Iulian Dnistran

Feb 14, 2023 at 10:14am ET

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If you’re old enough to have watched the old version of Top Gear, where Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond made automotive TV history, you might remember one particular episode featuring the world’s smallest production car, the Peel P50.

In that short film, Jeremy Clarkson took the tiny three-wheeler inside the old BBC headquarters in London and even managed to go into an elevator, all while driving the Isle of Man-made microcar.

Built in the early 1960s and marketed as having space for “one adult and one shopping bag,” the Peel P50 measured 54 inches (137 cm) long and 39 in (99 cm) wide, and was a thing to behold, but according to Wikipedia, just 47 of them were ever produced, with less than 30 surviving today.

However, in the early 2010s, two businessmen revived the company and started offering hand-built replicas of the original, fitting them with either gasoline or electric power sources.

The company, which is called Pendine Motors, has three models in its current lineup, starting with the classic P50 (which is actually called P.50 now because it's not the original), a limited edition convertible, and the two-seater Trident, however only the P.50 is available in kit form.

Prices start at £10,379 ($12,700) for the base do-it-yourself kit that comes with a 2-kilowatt motor, a battery that provides up to 50 miles of range, and everything else you need for a working, drivable, street-legal vehicle.

There's also a Turbo version of the electric P.50, which comes with a slightly more powerful, 5.76-kW motor that ups the top speed from 30 miles per hour to 50 mph.

The gasoline variant can be equipped with engines ranging from 49 cubic centimeters (cc) to 125 cc, but the company is advising customers to stick to smaller-sized engines so that the microcars can be registered and used as mopeds or light motorcycles.

What do you think?

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Building a P.50 at home takes about 50 hours and you only need basic hand tools, as it's a simple vehicle with few components. Enthusiasts that don't want to get their hands dirty can order a factory-built unit, but the price goes up accordingly, with an MSRP of £13,972 ($17,000) for a base electric P.50.

What do you think about this cute little EV? Let us know in the comments below.