B.Building cars is hard, so when Ben Hedley started his business, he started small. To be exact, he started at 75% of his size. Little His Cars His company, as the name suggests, Aston He makes small but battery-powered electric toys that can drive full-size classic cars such as Martins and Ferraris.
Hedley says it was almost a coincidence that the company reached £10 million in sales in four years and had 60 employees. The company's workshop at Bicester He Heritage is a converted Royal Air Force Base in Oxfordshire that has become a hub for classics. Automotive business. The company posted its first profit in the last fiscal quarter despite supply chain problems that have plagued automakers big and small.
Prices for replicas start at €36,000 (£30,800) and are only for the rich. But Hedley isn't content with making small, expensive electric versions of big cars. Hedley builds a full-fledged, street-legal version of the remote-controlled toy car that Hedley loved as a kid. By next summer, he hopes to launch his £15,000 simplified electric off-road buggy.
Working as a retail consultant before becoming a re-entrepreneur, Hedley came up with the idea for Little Car Company. He was importing a cheap replica of his Mini, but the French automaker Bugatti asked him if he could come up with something better for his motor show in Geneva. Then an aficionado contacted me and found a business opportunity for him.
"We had to sell the concept and then make things out of it," he says. "We thought, 'Let's make it as authentic as possible.'"
He borrowed an original version of the open-top Type 35 race car first built in 1924 and set out to make it as close to the original as possible, but with a rule banning fake exhaust pipes. .
Other cars followed, including a Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa designed to original blueprints and an Aston Martin DB5 in two-thirds scale of the car made famous by Sean Connery in the James Bond spy film franchise. rice field. For DB5, the company worked with the Bond filmmakers to copy gadgets from No Time To Die, such as a toy minigun and Smoke him machine.
The hefty price tag means replicas are out of reach for all but the wealthiest, but with Bicester Heritage trucks, it's easy to see why wealthy car enthusiasts would consider tens of thousands of forks With British ex-speed skier Hedley behind the wheel, the Aston Martin DB5 Replica looks racy around tight corners. Even the Guardian's slightly restrained use of the accelerator doesn't feel that far from driving a convertible electric car (if you have your head sticking out of the sunroof).
So the idea for a full-size car was born.
“We started thinking we got this cool powertrain,” says Hedley. "Jumping to make a city car was a bit of a stretch. What if we made a small car bigger?"
His model of choice is Tamiya's Wild One, the first remote-controlled off-road toy released in 1985. Little Car Co's version is 3.5 meters long, 1.8 meters wide and weighs about 250 kg, big enough for two people. Depending on the number of battery packs installed, the range should start at 50 km (30 miles). That's plenty of distance for the average UK commute.
Once the £15,000 price tag is achieved, it will put you in the range of kit car buyers. Little Car Co will never become a mass-market automaker, but if it manages to meet the challenge of making the Wild One Max legal on non-highway roads, the idea is that people will use them for city traffic. does not seem unimaginable. (Probably in warmer climates, given that it's fairly open to the elements.) become more and more attractive.
“This could be a summer alternative to hopping in a diesel SUV,” Hedley said of his prototype. "It's great fun. It's a completely different experience."
He says that building the Wild One Max shows just how many exceptions modern cars are made with. Air conditioning, giant touch screens, and electronic seat adjusters add weight, which increases your carbon footprint and costs.
Starting his company with the pandemic and recession looming was “a bit of a challenge,” he says. "Everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong." I'm trying to procure Ultimately, he hopes to build "thousands" of cars a year.
“We want to show that electric cars are fun and don't have to be 1,000 horsepower and 2.5 tons,” he says.