Big boy's toy, or potential winner?

[AE-NMidlands]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... g-spenders is interesting. Well worth reading it all, but I liked

Building cars is hard, so when Ben Hedley started his business he started small. To be precise, he started at 75% of the size. The Little Car Company does what its name suggests, producing shrunken but drivable battery electric toy versions of full-size classics from the likes of Aston Martin and Ferrari.
The company has made its way to £10m in turnover and 60 employees almost by accident over four years, Hedley says, walking around the company’s workshop in Bicester Heritage, a converted Royal Air Force base in Oxfordshire that has been turned into a hub for classic car businesses. The company made its first profits in the last financial quarter, despite supply chain problems that have hit automotive manufacturers big and small.

The replicas start at €36,000 (£30,800), meaning they can only be playthings for the rich. But Hedley is not content with building small, expensive electric versions of big cars. The company is launching an ambitious, even quixotic, effort to do the opposite: build a full-scale, road-legal version of a remote-controlled toy car that was popular when Hedley was a child. By next summer he hopes to launch a stripped-back, electric off-road buggy for £15,000.
/snip/
...A £15,000 price tag, if achieved, would put it within the range of kit car buyers. The Little Car Co is never going to be a mass market carmaker, but if it does manage to run the gauntlet of making the Wild One Max legal on non-motorway roads then the idea of people using them for urban transport does not seem inconceivable either (although probably in warmer climes, considering it will be fairly open to the elements). Cheap, small, electric runarounds like the electric G-Wiz or the Citroën’s newer cuboid Ami will be increasingly attractive as prices drop.

“This could be an alternative in the summer rather than jumping in a diesel SUV,” Hedley says of his prototype. “It’s brilliant fun. It’s just a completely different experience.”
/snip/
Making the Wild One Max has been a lesson in just how many excrescences modern cars are built with, he says. Air conditioning, giant touch screens and electric seat adjusters add weight, and therefore extra carbon emissions and cost.

[Stig]

This company are building a full size* electric version of my summer plaything:
https://www.driving.co.uk/news/new-cars ... wCNQ5sXy8U

*that's still not very big

[Stinsy]

I’ve been waiting for a BEV Westfield or similar.

Maybe using a LEAF as a doner…

[smegal]

I’ve been waiting for a BEV Westfield or similar.

Maybe using a LEAF as a doner…

I'd want a few more ponies (although, I'll never forget a leaf beating my 255 bhp Mégane off the line). Now some form of Tesla as a donor would be interesting.

[Oldgreybeard]

This company are building a full size* electric version of my summer plaything:
https://www.driving.co.uk/news/new-cars ... wCNQ5sXy8U

*that's still not very big

Looks great, I always wanted a "sprog eyed fright", but ended up with a 1275cc Midget instead, as every Sprite I looked at was more rust than car. That was in 1978, too, so the Sprites I was looking at weren't that old.

[Stig]

I cheated by buying a rotten Midget from a mate and replacing the body with one of the Frogeye Car Company "restoration assemblies" - galvanised chassis and GRP bodyshell.

[AE-NMidlands]

I cheated by buying a rotten Midget from a mate and replacing the body with one of the Frogeye Car Company "restoration assemblies" - galvanised chassis and GRP bodyshell.

Sounds good... but I can't get over how heavy it gets if you go for strength through thickness. There have been quite a few "corrosion-proof" cars haven't there?

We had once a first-floor flat, saw a woman over the road come home from shopping in their Reliant Robin, took her small child into the house first... by the time she came out to get the groceries the car was a smouldering pile of ash!

[Oldgreybeard]

I cheated by buying a rotten Midget from a mate and replacing the body with one of the Frogeye Car Company "restoration assemblies" - galvanised chassis and GRP bodyshell.

Sounds good... but I can't get over how heavy it gets if you go for strength through thickness. There have been quite a few "corrosion-proof" cars haven't there?

We had once a first-floor flat, saw a woman over the road come home from shopping in their Reliant Robin, took her small child into the house first... by the time she came out to get the groceries the car was a smouldering pile of ash!

My father was severely disabled, and for a short time in the 1960's drove around in a pale blue Invacar three wheeler, that could take his wheel chair alongside the sliding seat. The thing was far from safe, even when driven by an able-bodied person (as a teenager I drove it once - the direct tiller steering/brake/twist grip throttle was a nightmare). Inevitably he had an accident, went off road and hit the only tree for miles around. The thing completely disintegrated, and when the ambulance crew got to him he was sat on what remained of the floor pan, still strapped to the seat, with bits of pale blue fibreglass scattered all around. Thankfully he wasn't injured, and thought the whole thing was hilarious.

Crashworthy it was not!

[Stinsy]

I’ve been waiting for a BEV Westfield or similar.

Maybe using a LEAF as a doner…

I'd want a few more ponies (although, I'll never forget a leaf beating my 255 bhp Mégane off the line). Now some form of Tesla as a donor would be interesting.

The point is for the doner to be plentiful and cheap. LEAF isn’t slow and the same drivetrain in a lightweight 2-seater would be plenty quick enough!

[smegal]

I’ve been waiting for a BEV Westfield or similar.

Maybe using a LEAF as a doner…

I'd want a few more ponies (although, I'll never forget a leaf beating my 255 bhp Mégane off the line). Now some form of Tesla as a donor would be interesting.

The point is for the doner to be plentiful and cheap. LEAF isn’t slow and the same drivetrain in a lightweight 2-seater would be plenty quick enough!

They are generally powered by a more powerful engine that will probably be lighter than a leaf power train. ~90 bhp wouldn't be enough. Looking at current Westfield, they range from 170 to 250 bhp. A decent ev power train and sone good weight distribution would make an amazing kit car though.