Vintage-car aficionados love to grouse about the time and money it takes to keep their babies running. Electric GT has a better idea: Skip ahead a century. The California company has developed an ingenious plug-and-play “crate motor” that transplants an electric heart into most any vintage gasoline car.
I drove an orange 1982 Fiat 124 Spider that Electric GT converted to battery drive. With a relatively potent 89 kilowatts (120 horsepower) and 235 newton meters (173 pound-feet) of torque below its hood, and 25 kilowatt-hours’ worth of repurposed Tesla batteries stuffed into its trunk area, the Fiat can cover up to 135 kilometers (85 miles) of driving range, enough for a couple hours of top-down cruising.
Best of all, the system is designed to integrate exclusively with manual-transmission cars, including the Fiat’s charming wood-topped shifter and five forward gears. This romantic, Pininfarina-designed Fiat also squirts to 60 miles per hour in about 7 seconds, about 3 seconds quicker than the original old-school dawdler.
Electric GT first got attention when it converted a 1978 Ferrari 308, best known as Tom Selleck’s chariot on the U.S. TV show “Magnum, P.I.,” to electric drive. The company’s shop, north of Los Angeles, is filled with old Porsches, Toyota FJ40s, and other cars awaiting electrification.
The crate motors even look like a gasoline engine, with what appears at first glance to be V-shaped cylinder banks and orange sparkplug wires. Systems are engineered for specific cars, and the burliest of the bunch store 100 kWh, enough to give plenty of range.
With system prices starting at US $32,500 and topping $80,000 for longer-range units, this isn’t a project for the backyard mechanic on a Pep Boys budget. Eric Hutchison, Electric GT’s cofounder, says it’s for the owner who loves a special car and wants to keep it alive but doesn’t want to provide the regular babying care that aging, finicky machines typically demand.