If you’ve ever circled a crowded parking lot, eyeing the space wedged between an SUV and a cement pillar, muttering “Maybe with a motorcycle…”—well, as unlikely as it sounds, someone has managed to build a car for exactly that scenario. Enter Andrea Marazzi’s “Panda stretta,” a Fiat Panda slimmed down to the sort of dimensions normally reserved for oven mitts. As reported by The Autopian, this peculiar one-off measures just 19.6 inches wide, making it, by all available accounts, the world’s slimmest operational vehicle. Even in a world that occasionally gives us cars shaped like cubes or hotdogs, the narrow Panda stands out—partly because you might not see it if you’re not looking from the front.

Slicing the Panda: How and Why?

Described in Yanko Design, Andrea Marazzi, a mechanic working at his family’s scrapyard in Bagnolo Cremasco, Italy, spent over a year splitting a 1993 Fiat Panda vertically and rebuilding it as a personal tribute to the car’s original shape. Nearly every major original part—doors, lights, roof, and wheels—was reused, only reimagined on a dramatically reduced scale. The result is a sculptural single-seater with just enough elbow room for a tightly centered driver and not much else.

Marazzi didn’t stop with aesthetics. As both Yanko Design and The Autopian outline, the car’s usual front-wheel-drive gasoline setup is gone, replaced by a small electric motor borrowed from an e-scooter and a 24V battery. This new powertrain, which offers a top speed around 15 kilometers per hour (about 9 mph) and a range of 25 kilometers, is a study in single-mindedness—there’s just one driven wheel, with the other handling braking. Notably, these creative decisions weren’t made with daily driving or regulatory approval in mind: the Panda stretta offers functioning forward and reverse, proper brakes, and working lights and turn signals, but it isn’t designed or registered for the street.

A Festival Oddity

When Marazzi’s creation made its debut at Pandino’s “Panda a Pandino” gathering—a celebration attracting over a thousand Fiat Pandas, as detailed by Yanko Design—this car didn’t blend in. Footage reviewed by The Autopian and photos from the event reveal an immediate, collective double-take from onlookers more accustomed to Pandas of regular girth. The one-seater, engineered for mechanics rather than passengers, quickly went viral as attendees and online viewers alike wondered if they were seeing an optical illusion or an accidental foray into two-dimensional transportation.

Reactions online—chronicled in The Autopian’s roundup of social commentary—included everything from confusion to admiration. Some observed that “both arms tan equally,” while others joked it looked like a third-grade drawing brought to life, or pondered the logistics of actually turning the thing. There was even speculation about whether Guinness World Records had a category for “skinniest four-wheeled car,” since similar records all seemed reserved for unicycles or unusual parking maneuvers.

Not for the Commute (But Maybe for the Record Books)

While Marazzi’s Panda isn’t ever likely to tackle a daily commute—or even a proper street—it is mechanically sound enough to roll, turn, and stop. As highlighted by Yanko Design and reiterated in The Autopian, Marazzi is in the process of submitting the car to Guinness World Records for the title of slimmest functioning vehicle. No such record currently exists (though the database is more generous to “Smallest Roadworthy Car” and oddly specific “Narrowest J-Turn”), but one suspects Guinness might be as fascinated as the rest of us.

Whether or not the record is granted, the Panda stretta is already an outlier: at roughly one third the width of the original Panda, its silhouette blends nostalgia, humor, and a pinch of gentle absurdity. It’s not a tool; it’s an experiment—part tribute to design, part playful art installation, and arguably a subtle commentary on the ever-increasing size of modern vehicles.

Rethinking the Car One Dimension at a Time

So, what does it mean when someone shears a friendly city hatchback into an object that could moonlight as a bookmark? As explored by Yanko Design, the Panda stretta is both serious engineering and a creative wink—an answer to a question nobody thought to ask. In an era of supersized trucks and SUVs that seem to stretch ever outward, Marazzi’s Panda pulls back—way back—inviting us to imagine new proportions and new possibilities for just what a “car” might be.

It’s not practical, nor is it meant to be. But for every parking spot the rest of us have to abandon in defeat, there’s now at least one car that could slip in sideways and ask, “Is there a prize for this?” And you have to wonder—if the narrow Panda’s the only car at the festival to fit between two vans, does it win by default, or by design?