Students design tiny car for Top Gear

Coventry University students recently appeared on the Top Gear TV show as part of a project to design the smallest car in the world. The 13 students — on the university’s automotive and transport design course — were commissioned to produce a range of detailed design concepts to meet the show’s vision for a road-legal micro-car.

They had just a week to produce the material and present it to the Top Gear team. After a number of design stages involving all of the students, the concept drawings were whittled down to two. The chosen designs — by students Thomas Lumley from Coventry and Mike Antoniazzi from Cardiff — were then used to build a lightweight vehicle that can be driven on the road under current quadricycle rules.

Presenter Jeremy Clarkson was shown driving the car — code-named the P45 — around the streets of central London, as well as inside the Dominion Theatre and the British Library, in a bid to go one better than a previous feature in which he drove a Peel P50 car around the BBC’s headquarters.

Thomas Lumley, who grew up in Coventry, said: “It was a real privilege to work on a project for the Top Gear team. Quite a lot of background research went into it, as we were asked to make the car comply with micro-car regulations but also design it so it fitted with the ‘comedy’ element of Top Gear. It was a great chance to show off what we could do.”

Coventry University’s Automotive and Transport Design BA (Hons) degree course has a reputation for producing graduates who go on to top design positions in industry. Examples include Mark Fetherston, head designer for Mercedes-Benz, and John Iley, chief aerodynamicist for the Caterham F1 team. The Top Gear episode can be watched on BBC iPlayer until the end of March: (www.bbc.co.uk/i/b01qh2xl).