Cyril Cannell set up Peel Engineering in Peel, on the west coast of the Isle of Man, making glass-fibre products such as motorcycle fairings and boats. The company went on to build a small number of microcars, including the Manxcar concept and the P1000.
Its best-known car is the P50, built from 1962 to 1965. Designed to seat “one adult and a shopping bag”, it had a single-cylinder 49cc DKW engine, three wheels and no reverse gear, and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the smallest production car ever made. About 50 were built, and 27 are known to survive. The two-seater Trident, with its domed canopy, followed.
Peel stopped building cars in 1966 and returned to fairings and boats, and the original company was dissolved in 1974. Jeremy Clarkson’s 2007 Top Gear drive through the BBC’s offices made the P50 famous around the world, and in 2010 a new Peel Engineering company in Sidcup began building the P50 again, with electric or petrol power.
