Clarkson's Peel P50 Drive Through BBC Television Centre
Jeremy Clarkson drove the world's smallest production car to work, carried it into the office, took it in a lift and got lost inside BBC Television Centre.
Not every bad idea in this garage needed a welder. This one needed nothing more than a tall presenter, a tiny car and the BBC's patience. In series 10, Jeremy Clarkson decided that the answer to crowded cities was the Peel P50, and that the way to prove it was to drive one to work.
The car
The Peel P50 was built on the Isle of Man in the early 1960s. Clarkson gave its size as 54 inches long and 41 inches wide, and it's listed by Guinness as the smallest production car ever made. It has one door, a 49cc moped engine next to the driver's right knee, and no reverse gear. Clarkson noted that it cost £198 when new and that it was said to be "almost cheaper than walking".
Clarkson is six foot five, so getting in required a technique, which on camera was mostly leg first followed by hope. Top speed, he explained, depends on how big you are and what you had for breakfast.
The commute
He drove it across London to BBC Television Centre. He grumbled that he had to pay the congestion charge while the camera crew's hybrid 4x4 didn't. Then, because the P50 is light enough, he got out, picked it up and carried it inside.
Inside the building it became a car again. Clarkson drove it through the corridors, into the Top Gear office (where nobody cared about the supercars in the car park) and into a lift. Because there's no reverse gear, getting back out of the lift needed a push from newsreader Fiona Bruce. He then got thoroughly lost in Television Centre, blundering into a news broadcast along the way.
What went wrong
Very little, mechanically. The bad idea here was treating a 1960s microcar as a serious answer to modern commuting, inside a building that wasn't designed for cars of any size.
The weirdest bit
"I really think that today I have seen the future," Clarkson concluded, "and it comes from 1963." He called the P50 "absolutely brilliant", adding that if it had a reverse gear he'd call it the ultimate in personal mobility.
The car itself
We know the P50 on the show was blue. We don't know where that particular car is now, and we won't guess. The car in our photo is a different P50. For the full story, specs and real auction prices, see the Peel P50 in the Quirk Database.
Where is it now?
The blue Peel P50 from the episode
Whereabouts unknownAs of November 2026No reliable public record of which car it was or where it is now. Wikipedia confirms Clarkson drove a blue P50, but we couldn't find a trustworthy source saying where that particular car is now.
Seen one of these somewhere, or know where it went? Send us a tip through the tip line, ideally with a link we can check. We never publish a location we can't verify.
Related cars in the Quirk Database: Peel P50, BMW Isetta, Messerschmitt KR200.
Fact-check pit lane
Facts in this piece were checked against:
Not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the BBC, Top Gear, Amazon or The Grand Tour. Show names are used only to identify the episodes we're writing about. We don't use show stills or screenshots. Photos are freely licensed Wikimedia Commons pictures of the vehicles on public display, credited under each one.