Burnouts for the Planet: How Electric Classic Cars Is Electrifying Icons & Smoking Tires – CleanTechnica

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The crew over at Electric Classic Cars in Wales, UK, have been giving a second life to some of the most beautiful cars from days gone past thanks to a new generation of electric battery packs and motors.

They’ve developed custom kits that allow them to rapidly electrify a handful of classic vehicles, and with a bit more effort, they can build a custom kit for just about any car on the planet.

EV Conversions

They were in Central California helping out a local shop that electrifies the original Coopers with their kits, so we reached out. Thankfully, they were available and we were able to connect with them to get an inside look at what it takes for them to work their magic.

Being from the UK, a lot of these cars are things like minis, VW bugs and vans, Porsches. See Vintage Voltage on Amazon.

Racing Roots

Electric Classic Cars founder Richard “Moggy” Morgan has been racing and wrenching on cars all his life. After seeing some of the early production electric vehicles, he connected the dots and thought there might be an opportunity to improve the performance and reliability of the cars he loved with an electric powertrain.

In 2015, the instant torque and accessible power made them attractive, while the reliability and environmental friendliness was more of a side benefit. It also meant you could absolutely smoke a set of tires on a whim, if that’s your thing.

It turned out that slapping a compact electric motor and a few battery modules into a tiny Mini transformed it into what felt like a street legal go-kart.

Richard was hooked, and after some exploratory builds, he launched head first into converting cars. Some people need to see something to believe and as he and his motley crew converted more vehicles, word started to get out and what originally started as a hobby quickly grew into a company.

A Classic Car With An Electric Soul?

They created Electric Classic Cars not only to carry classic cars forward into an environmentally friendly future. They had a more audacious dream of making the classic cars they grew up loving and wrenching on into even more powerful vehicles that they could tune into even more exciting (and reliable!) machines.

Along the way, they’ve had to wrestle with their own definition of classic cars as they essentially rip the guts out of vehicles that could just as easily find a home in an auto museum. “I don’t think you lose any of the enjoyment of a classic car by converting it to electric,” Morgan told me. With each conversion, they’ve found a way to rationalize the decision, but ultimately it’s up to the customer whether they put their vehicle under the proverbial knife.

Upgrading unreliable leaky cars that don’t meet current emission standards with an electric powertrain is obviously the melding of two different worlds. It’s a classic car that everyone wants to see driving around for many years and decades to come, that has been given a heart transplant with a futuristic silent electric powertrain that gives it new life.

“If you have a classic car and you make it handle better, is that a good thing or a bad thing?” It’s a good thing. “You can take a classic car and make it perform better. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing,” Morgan said.

“You can make a classic car more reliable. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing. I’m going to make it quieter.” That’s when people typically start to object — until they ride in one of his conversions. As anyone who has driven an EV knows, the silence is heavenly.

It transforms the experience from a noisy, bumpy, smelly rip down the road into something closer to flying. That’s doubly true when you get off the pavement, according to Morgan. “Off-roading in an electric is a revelation. It’s so relaxing, it’s so capable.”

Richard jokingly said that they’re “Saving the planet, one burnout at a time.”

Driving Scale

Electric Classic Cars now has direct bolt-in kits for seven different classic vehicles that they sell and install themselves. They also work with custom car shops around the world to install their kits in customer cars all over the world, like Gildred Racing about an hour up the road from me in Buellton, California.

Over the last 10 years, they have demonstrated the ability to not only convert classic vehicles to electric. They are doing so in a way that strikes the perfect balance between preserving the classic soul of the car and giving it a powertrain that will let that vehicle continue to live on for many years into the future.

Thor

Richard and his mate Tim have been causing chaos in cars together for decades. They were a rally racing pair with Tim yelling out navigation instructions as Richard did his best to keep them out of the trees.

When we talked, it was clear that same racing spirit lives on in them today and just might be responsible for their latest project. Retrofitting an existing car with an electric powertrain necessarily comes with some compromises, and that’s fine. Doing this over and over left them wondering what would happen if they were to design a classic-inspired electric vehicle with no compromises. That’s where Thor came from.

Their design started with a custom chassis with modern suspension that will ensure the highest quality driving characteristics. Into that modern race-inspired chassis they’re bolting up one of their electric powertrains that has also been purpose designed and built to fit into their custom chassis.

It does away with chunky battery packs in the boot in favor of optimized battery pack placement. That means battery packs that are low and centered for the best handling characteristics. Not only will the battery packs be low, they’re being designed and utilized as ballast to keep the vehicle riding on rails.

On top of this new skateboard, they’re building a custom interior and body that will resemble the classic cars of yesteryear but built with modern materials like fiberglass and aluminum. They sound like the ultimate restomod but without the need to restore anything.

Thor is currently in development, and we can’t wait to see what the crew at Electric Classic Cars comes up with as they move this titanic new project from the drawing board into the shop one piece at a time.

For more information about Electric Classic Cars, follow them on X, check out their impressive YouTube channel, or head to their website.

All images courtesy Electric Classic Cars via X.