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"How do you relaunch a classic car brand? For a lot of companies, it means the traditional steps: redesigning it with sleeker lines, putting better parts under the hood, and updating it with 21st century amenities, such as GPS, seat heaters and satellite radio.\nFor the makers of the Peel mini-car, the Guinness World Record holder for the smallest street-legal car in the world, it's all about thinking small and efficient. Fortunately, there's plenty of desire for the cute little vehicles.\n\"The few original Peel cars that are left in the world, they easily run over \u00A3110,000 and \u00A3120,000 each,\" says Faizal Khan, owner and commercial director of Peel. \"For us to be selling road-legal cars for around $10,000 is a good value.\"\nKhan and his team are lovingly producing mini-cars, which were hand-built in the '60s on the Isle of Man, to appear exactly as the original models do. Only, this time, some of them have an extra-special kick under the hood \u2014 an electric motor that makes the already efficient and city-friendly car almost completely without a carbon footprint.\nMashable spoke with Khan and Peel's Engineering Head of Innovation James Buggle to get the low-down on bringing a classic car into the modern era \u2014 and how to keep the car so delightfully tiny.\nWould you use a Peel for your city commute? Let us know in the comments.\nQ&amp;A with Faizal Khan, Owner and Commercial Director, and James Buggle, Head of Innovation of Peel\nWhat about Peel's design makes it relevant now?\nKhan: Obviously, it holds the Guinness Book of World Records as the smallest car of all time \u2014 and has held it since the car was in production in the '60s. Cyrill [Cannell, Peel's inventor] was ahead of his time, and he was trying to predict the future \u2014 which he basically did. He thought there would be a need for a small, personal mobility vehicle that you can easily maintain and is also easy to park and easy to run.\nAlso, there's the quirkiness \u2014 the British quirkiness, especially. It's very easily distinguishable. It also, up until the reinvigoration, has been a unicorn vehicle: Many people have heard of it, but not many had actually seen one. It's likely you don't remember the first time you saw a Ferrari, because they're so regular now, but you will always remember the first time you saw a Peel.\nBuggle: The Peels kind of fit between the two camps, they have convenience of scooters and mopeds while having some of the comforts and features of cars.\nWith high fuel prices and the growing concerns over the environment and global warming, their economic, energy efficient, green credentials have come back in to fashion.\u00A0And the small, cute and quirky Peels\u00A0kind of put a fun and retro spin on the green car concept.\nPlus, I think there is something about designs that are small, simple and a bit different \u2014 they seem to have always had an appeal.\nWhat are the challenges in working with Peel's traditional design?\nBuggle: We have to be very sympathetic to the traditional design of the Peels.\u00A0Cyrill Cannell was driven by a very simple philosophy: to design an ultra light, ultra compact, very basic car. We are motivated by the same essential drive.\nWhen redesigning the Peel to meet modern standards, it is very easy to over-complicate the design.\u00A0So we strive to make the new Peel simple, light and easy to use. If a design doesn't fit that criteria, then we go back to the drawing board and rethink it.\u00A0\nOur vehicles also have to look like they're from the 1960s. Any new element we design or fit has\u00A0to look original. The key is if the customer can't tell whats new and what's original, then we've done our job.\n\n\nHow does that affect your new initiative in making the car electric?\nBuggle: The ironic thing is, going electric has made it a lot easier to be\u00A0sympathetic to the traditional style. The original engine was a tiny two-stroke, but due to emission regulations we've had change it to a much bulkier, heavier and more complicated four-stroke engine \u2014 with quite a few modifications having to be made to accommodate it.\nGoing electric has freed us up really.\u00A0\nAn electric motor is about a third the size of a gas engine with the equivalent power, and an electric drivetrain is much easier to package, so there are far fewer restraints on where you can place it.\u00A0\nIn the P50, for example, we've been able to move the motor inside the rear wheel, freeing up the space at the front where the engine used to sit. That space is now being used to house the ultra lightweight batteries.\nProbably our biggest advantage is when it comes to the dreaded \"Range Anxiety.\" There's much criticism over electric cars having short ranges of a few hundred miles or less. The Peels are fundamentally urban cars. They aren't intended for long freeway drives, and no one really expects to drive a Peel hundreds of hundreds of miles along freeways.\u00A0\nThis fact, plus the advancements in battery technology, has enabled us to create a removable battery pack that is very light (around 17 to 18 pounds) and portable. With a large enough capacity to hold about 20 miles worth of charge. Perfect for around town. More than one battery\u00A0can be fitted at any one time, so if you desire to go a bit further, up to three can be fitted to the P50 and four in the Trident. This increases the potential range to 60-80 miles or so. The batteries can be charged at home with a standard household plug socket.\nElectric motors seem perfectly suited to the Peels and they hold significant opportunities for us, it's no wonder back in the '60s Cyrill Cannell, George Gelling and the rest of the Peel engineering team experimented with an electric version of the Trident.\n\n\nHow is the design of a car made by hand different from a design from a factory made car? What are the limitations?\nBuggle: The big automobile manufacturers produce thousands of cars every day, we only produce five or 10 every few months. You get to know each car individually and each one almost has its own personality. Building a Peel is a much more intimate thing, compared to other companies who produce huge numbers of cars a year.\u00A0\nThe quality control is also different. Because they are built by hand, every detail can be controlled by the skill of our engineers. They are quite particular and fastidious. If anything doesn't quite work exactly how they want it, they'll tweak it and adjust it until it works perfectly.\u00A0\nKhan: It's a very difficult process. In the '60s, road regulations were not as strict as they are today. The very fact that the prototypes \u2014 which, for the record, costs us hundreds of thousands of pounds each \u2014 reconstructed an old vehicle that used modern day components to fit on the exact same size chassis while remaining road regulatory is a little piece of a miracle anyway.\nThat's why the limited run of vehicles that we are making are so popular with car collectors. They're a quality, hand-made British road car. \nYou're looking to create a third Peel design in the future. What are you keeping in mind as you try to create a new design that is cohesive with Peel's brand?\nKhan: We've started the process of a third model, which we hope to bring to market in 2014. And it'll be in keeping with the Peel design and feel, but it'll be a new model. It will still feel and look like its brother and sister, the P50 and the Trident, but it'll be more modern, a little slicker and a little sharper. We're excited to have it look like a modern design that still keeps in tradition with the other peel vehicles.\nWhat is your favorite part about working on the Peel cars?\nBuggle: The response we get from people when they see them is fantastic. I've been at motoring shows where we have had a P50 or a Trident sitting next to Lamborghinis and Ferraris, and as soon as anyone sees the little Peels, the crowd completely forgets about the ultra expensive, flashy super-cars. They add some fun to people's lives and there just seems to be something that makes people love them.\nFrom a personal perspective, it's working with the original designs of the cars. I'm inspired by the small details and innovations that were designed in to the originals. I'm still finding new elements that I haven't ever noticed before, even though I've spent years around the old cars. It's nice to keep noticing them and trying to carry them through to the new cars, as well as designing a few others.\nKhan: Obviously, we are a small British car manufacturer, and we try to keep the British handmade car flag flying high. I am so happy with the support we've gotten, but I'm excited to get more people excited about the Peel car \u2014 especially in America. I'm looking forward to more people saying, \"I may not want the Peel for my first car, or even for my second, but I want to use it to drive to the gym, or quick trips from college.\" I'm happy to expand the brand and get more people interested.\nIt's economical to use, it's economical to maintain, and it doesn't take up much space."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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