Metal You Can Pedal:
Small Cars for Future Motorists

The Greg Gladki-Charles Winekoff
Pedal Car Collection
through Jan. 11, 2004

A nostalgic trip back to childhood days when people were taller, summers were longer and pedal cars provided travel to adventure is awaiting visitors of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, Mich.

Metal You Can Pedal:  Small Cars for Future Motorists , a special exhibition of 40 original children's pedal cars from 1925 - 1969, runs through Sunday, Jan. 11, 2004. 

Pedal cars have been transformed into a collector hobby with books and shows, full-scale and miniature reproductions and cottage industries supplying restoration parts. This nostalgia-fueled passion for collectibles has sparked the growth of online auction sites. Type "pedal car" into e-Bay's search block and 700 entries will appear. Most pedal car collectibles date since 1945, both because the boom years of production were in the 1950s and 1960s and because World War II scrap drives took a toll on metal toys. Though not as rare, the post-war designs (some of the work of notable industrial designers including automobile industry legends Brooks Stevens and William L. Mitchell) have a charm all their own.

Pedal cars were not just an American phenomenon. U.S. manufacturers - which gradually consolidated into four main producers - sold pedal cars to a domestic market, but also exported them to South America and Europe. Europe produced pedal cars, too, but more often as marketing gambits by auto manufacturers like Citroen and Austin. - Continued -