Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson has done some crazy things over the years. In this episode he profiles and demonstrates the world’s smallest car – on England’s notoriously busy A3 motorway, no less. It’s comical, scary and informative – the episode, not the car.

The P45 is the tiny car that got it’s wheels broken in on that crazy highway. This one-seater sort of turns the driver, in this case Clarkson (no stranger to parody), into a human Transformer. It’s form fitting, in that it fits like a mechanical suit.

While it only boasts a 1.7 liter, 2-stoke 100 CC engine, it’s still fitted with four wheel, all-terrain drive. The P45 also has all the typical necessities needed to make it street legal: License plate, turn signals, headlights, etc. But thanks to Clarkson’s laugh-out-loud demonstration, it comes with an unofficial ‘don’t try this at home’ warning.

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It’s clear to almost everyone that we need to figure out some sort of alternative fuel source for widespread vehicular use before we run out of oil entirely. So far, electric seems to be the front-runner in that race, but AIRPod is a spunky little car that is introducing a new idea to the world: compressed air.

The tiny, zero-emission urban car was developed by Motor Development International after extensive research into urban mobility and alternative fuels. They came up with this adorable little bubble car that is controlled by a joystick and can even be driven inside places like train stations or airports because it’s clean-running.

The flagship model of the AIRPod line can hold up to three adults and one child – definitely not a family vehicle, but perfect for commuting. Best of all, unlike those gas/electric hybrid cars on the road now, an AIRPod will only run you $10,000. You’ll have to wait to snap up your own, though – the company has been trying to get them into production since 2000, but so far they are still in the prototype stage.

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The smallest cars ever commercially produced were the Peel microcars, a line of tiny automobiles made on the Isle of Man. Only a small number of Peel cars were produced in the 1960s, but their tiny size and unique three-wheeled bodies have made them immensely popular with car enthusiasts and lovers of strange retro objects ever since.

The Peel P50 had only one seat, and was advertised as having only enough room for a driver and a shopping bag. The overall unladen weight of the car was a tiny 130 pounds, making it a terrifying little bubble to drive on a busy motorway. With a top speed of just 38 MPH, it probably wouldn’t have been a great idea to take it on the motorway in the first place.

Both the Peel P50 and the later model Peel Trident were sold for under £200, which was cheap even in 1960s currency. The bodies were solid fiberglass with no chassis, making for a lightweight vehicle that could be dragged indoors for safekeeping if desired. Since the three-speed manual transmission didn’t include a reverse gear, pushing and pulling the car by the handle on the back were pretty common occurrences.

The company that manufactured Peel cars claimed that both models got around 83 miles to the gallon – impressive specs that make the micro-cars seem more appealing today. Unfortunately, Peel didn’t last long as a manufacturer, but there are many Peels still running in the UK and in other countries. The cult status of these tiny cars ensures that they’ll always be greeted with a smile wherever they turn up.

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