‘Brilliant fun’: UK automaker shrinks classic cars for big spenders

The Little Car Company, housed in a converted RAF base at Bicester, makes miniature classics that run on batteries

Building cars is hard, so when Ben Hedley started his business he started small. To be precise, he started at 75% of the size. The Little Car Company does what its name suggests, producing shrunken but drivable battery electric toy versions of full-size classics from the likes of Aston Martin and Ferrari.

The company has made its way to 10m in turnover and 60 employees almost by accident over four years, Hedley says, walking around the company's workshop in Bicester Heritage, a converted Royal Air Force base in Oxfordshire that has been turned into a hub for classic car businesses. The company made its first profits in the last financial quarter, despite supply chain problems that have hit automotive manufacturers big and small.