Porsche's 550 J comes from a firm that owed buyers £2.6 million

Porsche lends its name to a builder that was in administration in March

Hedley Studios revealed the Porsche 550 J on 15 September: an 80 percent scale electric recreation of the 1956 550 A Spyder, licensed by Porsche, limited to 250 cars at £69,500 before tax, about €80,000. It is not road legal. The company building it appointed administrators on 4 March 2026, was sold back to its founder 13 days later for £250,000, and left its earlier customers owed £2,641,001 in deposits.

The Porsche 550 J weighs 330 kg and makes 11 hp as standard

The 550 J is built to 80 percent of the original's size from Porsche's production drawings and a 3D scan of a full-size car. Underneath is a tubular spaceframe, as on the 550 A, and the body panels are hand-formed carbon fibre composite. A single electric motor and the battery sit behind the two seats, where the four-cam engine used to be, to keep the weight distribution. The standard car has 11 hp, a 64 km/h top speed and 48 km of range. The RS Pack raises that to 22 hp, 81 km/h and 81 km, adds adjustable Bilstein dampers and drilled Brembo discs, and takes the weight from 330 to 350 kg. A Nardi wheel copies the original and the choke lever now selects drive modes. Unlike Hedley's Bentley Blower Jnr, or a homologated restomod such as the Fiat 500 Scattante, the 550 J is not approved for the road.

Porsche built about 90 original 550 Spyders at 550 kg and 110 hp

The 550 was Porsche's first purpose-built racing car. Built from 1953 to 1956 in around 90 examples, it carried a 1.5-litre four-cam flat-four of 110 hp in a car weighing roughly 550 kg and raced at Le Mans, the Mille Miglia and the Carrera Panamericana. The 550 A of 1956 swapped the ladder frame for the spaceframe the 550 J copies. James Dean died in one on 30 September 1955, and an original now sells for well over a million euros. It is also the start of Porsche's mid-engined line, which runs through the 718, whose electric successor Porsche confirmed in August.

Hedley Studios appointed administrators on 4 March 2026 with 74 staff

The business began in 2018 as The Little Car Company, when Bugatti asked Ben Hedley for a scaled Type 35 to mark its 110th anniversary. Aston Martin, Ferrari and Bentley followed, the last with the road-legal Blower Jnr, limited to 349 cars and in production since May 2025. In August 2025 the business was sold through a pre-pack administration to a new company backed by its American investor Island Capital and renamed Hedley Studios; by then it had delivered more than 500 cars in over 60 countries. In December 2025 Hedley bought the shares back. In January 2026 the company hired Interpath to find money; Interpath approached more than 250 parties, received no offer, and on 4 March the director appointed administrators. Seven of the 74 staff were kept on. On 17 March the business and its assets were sold to Hedley Labs Limited, a connected party, for £100,000 on completion and £150,000 due in May, with five employees transferring. In that sale the goodwill and name, carried in the books at £9.03 million, went for £1.

The statement of affairs lists £2,641,001 owed to pre-paid customers

Ben Hedley signed the statement of affairs on 15 April 2026. It lists £2,641,001 owed to customers who had paid for cars they had not received, £1,731,426 to trade suppliers, £776,870 to 63 employees, £629,373 to HMRC and £338,610 to the three brands whose names were on the cars: £191,535 to Bentley Motors, the rest to Ferrari and to Bugatti. Against that, the assets are estimated to realise £1.64 million and the shortfall to creditors is put at £3.64 million. The administrators write that the timing and amount of any payment to unsecured creditors is unknown, that finished cars passed to the purchaser subject to an earn-out, and that the case will most likely end in dissolution or liquidation. Customers who paid for cars last year are on that list, and the company that will build the Porsche is not the one they paid.

Bentley, Bugatti and Ferrari wanted a buyer who already knew the business

The licences are why the administrators chose the connected-party sale over selling the stock piecemeal. Their proposals record that the brands wanted any purchaser to know the operation already, so that their customers kept being supplied, which in practice meant the founder; an independent evaluator signed off the price on 13 March. Porsche has now joined that list of licensors, six months after the collapse. The crest on the nose belongs to Porsche AG; the invoice, and the deposit, belong to a company that bought its predecessor's goodwill for £1.

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Licensed scale cars are a deposit business. The customer pays up front, the builder buys the carbon and the Bilsteins, and the brand lends its name to a car it never has to warrant. When the builder fails, as this one did twice in eight months, the brand keeps its name, the founder keeps the business, and the customer joins a creditor list with no payout date. Porsche has signed up to that arrangement, and 250 cars at £69,500 is £17.4 million of orders before tax.

The administrators' first progress report, covering the six months to 3 September, is due within weeks. It will say whether the £150,000 that fell due in May was paid, and whether the earn-out on the finished cars has returned anything to the people who paid for them. If it has not, every 550 J deposit is being taken by a company that has not yet settled with its last set of customers, with a Porsche crest on the bonnet.

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