Pedal cars and the other ride-on vehicular toys of childhood have introduced a massive number of children to a fun facsimile of motoring, a decade or more before those same kids would ever get behind the wheel for real. While bikes, scooters, and skateboards are their own kind of fun, there remains something special about having a steering wheel, pedals of a sort, and a good old fashioned handbrake. These little machines are as much about driving fantasy as real sports cars, and for a child, are just as much fun. All that fun can be had for a surprisingly small amount of money, when compared to a powered go-kart that is less safe. These are the vehicles of childhood.