Page 51 - April 2023

And Now, Direct f rom t he Isle of Man,
?The idea for The Trident was simply to build a
car that was able to take another person, as long
as the two people weren? too large.?
t
?With a lift up top you could get out without
interfering with passing traffic and also for
parking in between two other vehicles without
having to open doors.?
Cyril Cannell, owner of Peel Engineering and
automotive innovator l
Above: On display a P50 at Motoclassica in
Melbourne, Australia. image by license Dreamestime.com
The Peel P50,
t he World's Smallest St reet Car
They say good things come in small packages, but you don't
have to carry it to extremes, unless you want to buy one at
auction. Recently an unmolested example of a P50 sold in 2022
at a public auction for £111,000 . This is not a misprint.
The 1.3m long, 59kg micro-car, sold for the price of a new
Porsche 911 Carrera GTS--take that Stuttgart-- you have nothing
on the 60-year-old supercar from the Isle of Man. The P 50 was
actually quite rare, a 1963 pre-production prototype with a
slightly lower windscreen than production models would carry,
sidelights by Lucas, and a spiffy cream steering wheel. There was
no roll bar.
Unlike the Reliant Robin that could manage speeds up to 85 mph
in its later versions, in the proccess confounding the laws of
physics with its high center of gravity producing a car that could
actually tip over, this wasn't a problem for the P 50. With only
three forward gears and no reverse, its single cylinder 44cc
engine produced a whopping top speed of 38 mph; rolling over
was low on the list of concerns. The P-50 had no onboard
instrument panel-- why would you need it?
The 2022 P50 was not the most expensive of the Peel cars ever
to be sold. With only 46 of them ever built, in 2016 one topped
an auction at £120,000.
Jeremy Clarkson once jammed himself into a P50 for a TV
program and demonstrated that it could fit into a BBC elevator
and drive, with room to spare, between the desk rows of an
office. Like much of what Clarkson has done in automotive
journalism, this was watchworthy television. At 6'4", plus a
smidge, watching Clarkson get in and out of the P50 was very
entertaining.
The Beginnings of t he Peel P 50
In 1962 a sleepy seaside town on the Isle of Man witnessed the
appearance of some very strange shapes. A Peel boatbuilding
company, specializing in fiber glass shells decided to turn their
hands to producing a micro-car, a true ultralight, certainly a
subber than sub compact motor, suitable for urban motoring on
narrow streets or zipping through a seaside town.
Peel's Engineering's owner, Cyril Cannell, may his name live
forever in the annals of automotive eccentricity, was responsible
for the invasion of the P 50s. Later, he would also develop an
advanced version by putting a plexiglass dome on his creation,
announcing that two could fit, snuggly, if one wasn't too large,
and making the whole top lift off, so there were no doors. He
called the result The Trident,
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