Here’s an Awesome, Fully-Functional Vespa Teardrop Trailer Built From Scratch

Downsizing doesn’t get any cuter or more ingenious than this. In the unofficial running for the world’s smallest but still fully-functional trailer, this one is an absolute winner: a tiny DIY teardrop trailer custom-made for a vintage Vespa scooter.

This teardrop trailer is known as a foamie, because it’s made of foam coated in poor man’s fiberglass, which is a layer of canvas glued onto the foam with tight-bond glue and covered with a layer of waterproof latex paint. It’s cheap, it’s lightweight and, despite whatever you might think, it’s pretty stable and sturdy. Tom Burick of Mensa, Arizona knows, because he’s already taken it on countless trips around the country – with his vintage Vespa scooter.

Most, if not all DIY (do it yourself) projects are inspirational, if only because of the sheer display of creativity and skill. But few hold a candle to this trailer, the brainchild of teacher Burick, brought to reality with help from woodworker Lucy. The build was duly documented in late 2021 on their respective platforms: Tom posts under The Tiny Side of Tiny moniker, while Lucy is The L Wood.

It was Tom who reached out to Lucy with the idea, which he needed for one of his school projects. He wanted a very small, one-person teardrop-style trailer that he could tow with a 1962 Vespa scooter, and that he would use for his projects at school. As the build progressed, he decided that he was actually going to use it to travel by himself, so they started integrating real functionality into it.

Make no mistake about it, Tom was no rookie with minuscule trailers. Prior to this foamie, he built a scooter cargo trailer for his Honda Ruckus scooter, which he took on an extended – and probably some form of record-breaking – journey from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Mexico, and then to San Jose, California.

The Vespa trailer is designed after the 1947 Cabin Car trailer, a wooden teardrop trailer built in Canada. It’s actually a scaled-down version of it adjusted for weight, so there is no real wood on it. Instead, it sits on an aluminum chassis with 13-inch tires on a solid axle, and is made of foam, with acrylic windows. It weighs just 170 pounds (77.2 kg), and offers incredible amenities, especially if you consider its size: a one-person bed, an interior kitchenette, storage space, and a tailgate galley.

This might sound like a joke, but Tom vouches for how functional this tiny trailer is. It might not have much of everything, but it has the basics, and they’re oftentimes enough for himself and a friend. Take, for instance, the second video available at the bottom of the page, in which he shows off the galley and how it’s enough to cook a Thanksgiving dinner for two, including the (small) bird, mashed potato salad, and peas.

The interior is snug and, for someone like Tom, who is not exactly tall at 5’4 (162 cm), quite spacious. He has room to sit up in bed, and he imagines he could fit another person of his build in the bed beside him. The kitchenette looks like a playhouse thing, but it comes with a sink and some storage space, so it allows him to make coffee and breakfast if the weather takes a turn and outdoor cooking is no longer possible.

Perhaps surprisingly, the shelf on the rear wall is actually for display purposes. Tom calls it the “stable” for his “horses,” and he doesn’t mean that euphemistically: he has a pair of late 1940s-style wooden horses that he really wanted to place inside the trailer on display, so he tasked Lucy with building backlit shelves for them. Behind the horses is deep storage, so he gets the best of both worlds.

Another cute touch comes from the door locking mechanism, which doubles as an art piece and key rack, and reads “I Roam with Foam.”

The kitchen at the rear includes another small sink (basin, more like it), a one-burner portable stove, a sizable countertop that serves as prep space, and hidden storage for everything from plates to cutlery and condiments. As expected, everything is scaled down to the max, to the point where it feels almost like a toy, but as Tom promises, everything works in real-life conditions. Again, he knows because he’s been traveling with the rig to a variety of places.

As for the towing vehicle, it’s a beautiful 1962 Vespa VBB still wearing the original baby blue paint, which Tom loves so much he color-matched the trailer. The scooter is powered by a 170cc two-stroke engine that develops 4.5 hp and is mated to a 4-speed manual transmission. It’s not a lot, but it works just fine with the lightweight trailer. Stopping power comes from dual drum brakes, which Tom doubted at first but has since come to appreciate.

In one of his most recent interviews, Tom said that the rig can hit top speeds of 40 mph (64.4 kph), which is exactly how fast you’d want to go on a trailer-towing vintage Vespa, if you think about it. It’s also the kind of speed that allows people on the street the chance to have a proper look at your awesome rig.