Model Classic Cars on Display in Sag Harbor Are More Than Just Toys

When Ben Hedley was 5 years old, growing up in England, his uncle gave him a model of a Porsche 911.

“I was obsessed with it,” Hedley said of the famous German sports car, which is a common sight on East End roads every summer. “And I always wanted to be a car designer — but I couldn’t draw.”

But the obsession stayed with him. Today, he is the founder and creative CEO of Hedley Studios, formerly the Little Car Company, which makes finely crafted scale replicas of some of the most famous cars of the 20th century, all of which are powered by electric motors that can sustain speeds ranging from the low 40s to mid-50s mph.

Some of those cars, including a replica Bugatti Type 35 race car, a pair of miniature Ferrari 250 Testa Rossas, a reduced-scale Aston Martin DB5 similar to the one driven by James Bond, and a road-legal but slightly smaller version of a 1929 Bentley Blower are on display at Tutto il Giorno restaurant in Sag Harbor, where they will remain through Labor Day.

It is one of several pop-up galleries the company, in partnership with Andrew L. Farkas’s Island Capital Group, is setting up in upscale locations throughout the United States and Europe to drum up interest in the exquisite, limited edition models.

On the Fourth of July weekend, with Sag Harbor packed to the gills, the reproductions drew a steady stream of curious onlookers, including kids and men who might wish they were still kids. Well, kids who can afford to pay as much, say, as a modern version of that Porsche that first inspired Hedley would cost, for what is essentially a play thing.

“They say the older we get, the more expensive our toys become,” said Hedley, who also points out that many customers display his replicas like works of art — motorized sculptures, if you will.

And Hedley said it has never been his intention to just make toys. He works with the manufacturers to make scale reproductions that, save for the lack of a gasoline engine, are as true to the original as possible.

Take the Ferraris, for instance: Hedley and his team work with the company, which gave them access to the blueprints for the original vehicles. Ferrari supplied the paint, the nameplates, leather interior, and even the accelerator and brake pedals. The craftsmen at Hedley shaped the aluminum body by hand, as Ferrari’s own craftsmen would have done back in the 1950s.

Although Hedley had to give up plans to become a designer, he did make his way to Cambridge, where he studied engineering and followed an entrepreneurial path. Years later, while working for a company that made unsanctioned replicas of famous cars, he was asked by Bugatti to design a scale model of a Bugatti Type 35 for the company’s 110th birthday, similar to one Ettore Bugatti, the company’s founder, had built for his own son in the 1920s.

Instead of a basic knockoff, Hedley and his team designed a precise replica down to the 50-gram silver nameplate on the front of the car that is 75 percent the size of the original.

Nor is Hedley above having a little fun. The Aston Martin on display, which is two-thirds the size of the original, has machine guns hidden behind the headlights, just as Bond’s car did. It can also leave a smokescreen, in the event you have to elude a villain or his henchmen. The car also has a rotating series of license plate numbers corresponding to the versions of the famous car that Bond drove in various films, and a video plays to various Bond theme songs.

On the Bentley, the only car that is street legal and which is 85 percent the size of the original racer, Hedley sought to use parts that no longer serve a real purpose. So, a cap can be removed from a nonfunctioning supercharger mounted on the front of the vehicle, which reveals a charging receptacle. Since the car runs on electricity, there is no need for a gas tank, so it has been repurposed as a small luggage storage compartment.

Hedley is coy when asked to name what car will be next in the lineup, although a Jaguar XKE might make a suitable addition, particularly for a British company.

Nor will he share the prices of the various vehicles, except for serious inquiries. But a simple Google search can provide some hints — and prices for the replicas meet or exceed the prices of even some of the coveted vehicles that filled the village over the weekend.