Last Vans Standing

Simon Stabler celebrates 65 years of Tonibell

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What would you consider to be the sound of the summer? Chilled-out music? The knock of leather on willow? Or perhaps the chimes of an ice-cream van?

We have Ron Peters to thank for bringing the ice-cream chime to the UK, one of several innovations he introduced during his time in charge of Tonibell, one of the country's best-known ice-cream retailers.

The company began in 1937, when Ron's father, Italian-born Toni Pignatelli (Ron himself had been born Romualdo Pignatelli), founded the ice-cream manufacturing business Toni's Cream Ices. With Ron on board, the company went from strength to strength, opening a couple of shops in addition to a factory in Middlesex.

In 1960, the company rebranded as Tonibell, a combination of the name Toni with bellissima, the Italian word for very beautiful, and commissioned coachbuilders Graham Brothers of Enfield to build 100 ice-cream vans based ona Bedford CA 15 cwt chassis. Originally painted pale blue, it wasn't until 1970, six years after the company was taken over by British American Tobacco — as a way, unthinkable today, to promote its own products — that the vans were given their now familiar “hot” pink branding.