Some people starting growing their own vegetables during lockdown earlier this year. Others got into sour dough bread, while others reorganized and cleaned up their living quarters like never before. Most just drank, ate and binge-watched more.
Not Alton Tyrell, though. The Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire, UK resident owns a van company but, like the rest of the wold, he no longer had a job to go to. And his isn’t exactly the kind of work you can do from home, so he had to find something else to occupy his time.
That something turned out to be a Postman Pat replica that took him 100 hours of work and some £1,000 ($1,292 at the current exchange rate), including what he paid for the Postman Pat coin machine he got off eBay. He tells the Examiner Live that his tiny EV is nothing short of a mobility scooter, but it’s dressed up so nicely that everyone stops to look.
Postman Pat was a stop-motion animated series by Woodland Animations that ran in the ‘80s. Created with preschool kids in mind, it tells the adventures of Pat Clifton, a postman for the Royal Mail in the tiny village of Greendale.
Since completing his project at the end of August, Tyrell has been driving his tiny build all over: he took it to the McDonald’s drive-thru and Starbucks, on the town streets and even inside supermarkets. Because it’s not road legal, he doesn’t actually drive it on the street and sticks to the pavement.
It’s not like he could ever keep up with traffic. On a full charge, the EV can go for up to 7 miles (11.2 km), but it’s incredibly slow. After all, mobility scooters aren’t exactly known for their zapping speed.
Still, Tyrell is now what you could call a local celebrity. “I did it to make people laugh because I’m a bit of a joker,” he says.
Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends. Full profile
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