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The World’s Smallest Ice Cream Van
Commissioned for Nestlé’s FAB Ice Mini lollies launch, we transformed a Peel P50 into the world’s smallest ice cream van. Finished in full FAB livery, it featured a bespoke roof covered in 2-inch-long, 5/8-inch-diameter plastic “hundreds and thousands,” each hand-painted—a playful, detail-led build created to deliver maximum impact on the smallest possible scale.
A Very Small Big Idea
P50CARS was approached by Nestlé with a wonderfully mad idea: build the World’s Smallest Ice Cream Van to launch their new Mini FAB ice lollies. The brief was simple in theory and outrageous in practice—take our tiny electric P.50 and transform it into a fully functioning ice cream van, bursting with British summer nostalgia. The FAB lolly, first launched in 1967 and inspired by Lady Penelope’s famous pink Rolls-Royce in Thunderbirds, was the perfect muse: playful, iconic, and unapologetically fun.
660 Sprinkles of Obsession
Nestlé wanted more than a visual gimmick. This had to work. The van needed chimes, an illuminated roof sign, and a genuine freezer—despite being based on the world’s smallest production car. We painted the body in strawberry red, vanilla white, and chocolate brown, then set about recreating the FAB’s signature hundreds-and-thousands roof. All 660 sprinkles were individually made from cast acrylic, cut, shaped, sanded, painted in five colours, and painstakingly positioned by hand. The freezer box had to be engineered from scratch using solid-state piezoelectric cooling powered by the car’s lithium-ion batteries, neatly fitted where a petrol engine would normally live.
Smallest Van, Biggest Reactions
Authenticity was everything. Classic ice-cream-van chimes—Greensleeves, Yankee Doodle, O Sole Mio—were played through speakers hidden inside the illuminated roof sign, while bespoke FAB branding and old-school warnings like “MIND THAT CHILD!” completed the look. After three months of obsessive craftsmanship, the tiniest ice cream van on earth was ready. It debuted in a national launch video before touring the UK throughout summer 2013, delighting crowds and handing out miniature FABs to kids of all ages—a small vehicle with an outsized dose of joy, nostalgia, and sheer British eccentricity.
Build Photos
A fully functioning ice cream van, engineered from the ground up at miniature scale.
