Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Classic cars get a dose of electroshock therapy
When Prince Harry married Meghan Markle, it wasn’t the romance or the pageantry that set automotive hearts aflutter. It was the couple’s Jaguar E-Type Zero — a classic E-type body fitted with a modern electric drive.
Best of all, mere commoners could buy one, Jaguar said, for an estimated $380,000. Until they couldn’t.
In late 2019, more than a year after the wedding, Jaguar broke the news: “Jaguar Classic has taken the difficult decision to pause development of the all-electric E-Type Zero for the foreseeable future.”
You can still get an electric E-Type, possibly for less than Jaguar would have charged. If you supply the Jag, “I think we could do it for $100,000,” said Michael Bream, owner of EV West, a San Marcos, California, conversion shop that turns gas guzzlers into electrically charged chariots.
His shop has converted a Dodge A100 van, a Dowsetts Comet and some BMW classics. After working out the kinks on the first
E-Type, he said, the costs could come down to $50,000.
A convergence of interest in electric power and classic cars has spawned specialty shops that turn classics into silent brutes with tire-burning torque and vintage style. The problem facing these shops is the technology advances so quickly that a build may be outdated before it’s complete. These shops are now working to speed up production, bring down costs and put bolt-on car conversion kits into hobbyists’ hands.
The conversion market came to life during the 1970s oil crisis, when gas prices skyrocketed and around-the-block lines formed at the pumps.
“People were trying to screw Big Oil, driving their car with a forklift motor in it,” said Marc Davis, founder of Moment Motor Co., a conversion shop in Austin, Texas.
When the crisis ended, so did interest in electric cars. There was a resurgence in the 1990s when California essentially forced major manufacturers to offer zero-emissions vehicles if they wanted to sell their gas-powered cars there.
Jaguar wasn’t the only company to tantalize vintage-car aficionados with classic conversions. A Volkswagen project that put the carmaker’s electric e-Up guts into a classic Beetle led some to think VW would put conversions into production. VW had collaborated with eClassics, a shop in Germany, which produced the e-Beetle, reported to sell for $110,000. Availability is unknown. The shop did not respond to a query from The New York Times.
You can get an electric Bug from Zelectric, a conversion shop in San Diego. It specializes in 1950s and ’60s Beetles and Porsches, which, owing to their rearengine layout, are among the easiest cars to convert.
Zelectric’s owner, David Benardo, was in advertising when he decided to build his own electric Bug.
“I documented it on social media,” he said, “and people asked me, ‘Can you make me one?’ ”
Prices start at $62,000. Add-ons like air conditioning can run $10,000 and full restoration $50,000 more, which can drive the price as high as $170,000.