The £30k baby Bugatti built in Britain

It was Ettore Bugatti who first realised you could make a car for a child just as exquisite as the real thing. He made a half-scale Type 35 for his four-year old son in 1926 and pretty soon all his customers wanted one for their offspring, too. Five hundred “Bugatti Baby” models were made and, just like the Austin J40s that compete in the Settrington Cup at the Goodwood Revival, they gave their young pilots their first taste of motorsport. Today the few that survive can change hands for as much as $100,000.

Back then these cars were pedal-powered but in 2020 a new generation of electric junior cars is taking to road and track. The British company at the vanguard of this resurgence is the Little Car Company. It was started just two years ago when it won the contract from Bugatti to build the first officially-sanctioned Bugatti Baby II.

The new baby Bug has been swiftly followed by the Little Car Company’s second model: a two-thirds scale Aston Martin DB5, designed in partnership with Aston Martin. Now with both cars in production, the Little Car Company has moved to a new production centre in that home of all things classic car, the former RAF World War Two bomber station, Bicester Heritage.

In what amounts to a major expansion for the firm and a doubling of its staff, the new Bicester HQ will house not only production facilities but also a design studio, client handover area and experience centre. Owners will even be able to test the cars on Bicester Heritage’s test track.

“To start the company with the new Bugatti Baby was such an honour,” the Little Car Company’s founder and chief executive Ben Hedly tells GRR. “Just as with the original Bugatti Baby we are making a limited run of 500 cars and they are almost all sold out.

“The car I always wanted to do after the Bugatti was the DB5, it is such an icon. We worked very closely with (Aston design director) Marek Reichman and his team who provided a 3D scan of a real DB5 for us to work from. Marek even insisted on full-size Aston Martin badges. The result has been fully endorsed by Aston Martin.

“We are making 1,059 of the DB5 Junior, same number that were made of the original, and we can match chassis numbers to actual cars so parents and youngsters can share in the DB5 ownership experience.”

Young (from about five years old) DB5 drivers may even be able to share in motorsport too: Hedley is planning a race series with an “equivalence” formula so that Bugattis and Astons can race each other on an equal footing.

“With our cars we make sure adults can drive them as well as children so everyone can have fun,” says Ben. “What we would like to do is some form of adult-child racing like a pro-am series. When people see the detail in our cars they want to have them in their living room, then when they drive them and see how quick they are all they want to do is race them. Imagine a field of DB5 Juniors hammering around Goodwood!”

The cars, built around an aluminium honeycomb chassis and composite body, are powered by a 48-volt system with 6.8PS (5kW) electric motor in the base car – or double that power in the carbon-fibre-bodied Vantage version. Top speeds can be restricted via different drive modes, but in the top Race setting the Vantage will do 30mph and have a range of 20-40miles. Double wishbone suspension and four-wheel ventilated disc brakes feature.

In the flesh (we saw them at Salon Prive at Blenheim Palace) the cars are stunning, visually convincing enough to make you do a double-take. And they are not so Lilliputian. The Bugatti is three-quarters scale and the Aston two-thirds with, as this writer discovered, enough room for adults well over 6ft, with easy access thanks to a quick-release steering wheel.

Leather upholstery, Smiths dials, 1960s style clock and steering wheel plus working headlights, brake lights, indicators and a horn all feature.

The cars do not come cheap. The three-quarter scale Bugatti starts at £30,000 while in the UK the top DB5 Vantage with more power and lighter carbon-fibre body sells for £45,000 – all prices excluding tax. Hedley says his cars are going to customers all around the world.

Other classy little ‘uns from the Little Car Company are on their way. The company is in talks with six other manufacturers to recreate famous old models in small scale, with announcements for what they are due next year. All of them will be officially sanctioned. “We will only ever do junior versions of classic cars as official projects with the manufacturers,” says Hedley.

For one British car company getting bigger is all about thinking small…