John Simister
Electrified classics just aren’t the same, says John.
‘We should not be too quick to electrify any of our cherished classic cars’
Yesterday, as I write this, was New Year’s Day. As is the tradition among my car-nut friends, a posse of us drove to the New Year gathering of ageing cars and warmly dressed enthusiasts at Brooklands. This year we had an MGB, a Chevrolet Corvair Corsa, a Porsche 911 2.7 RS Carrera, a Citroën Traction Avant and my two-stroke Saab, the Rover 2000 TC being in pieces and unable to play. As we munched hot bacon-andsausage rolls and drank coffee by the pop-up Paddock Café, we contemplated the year ahead and what it might hold for our old-car activities.
On the far side of the world, south-eastern Australia burned. A pre-christmas documentary called ‘The Last Igloo’ showed how receding Greenland ice has rendered past hunting traditions impossible. Fossil fuels are increasingly vilified.
This does not sit happily with our hobby, even if the contribution of classic cars to global heating is but a miniscule part of the problem.
But beyond the cold facts of a warming planet, a look across the Brooklands carscape showed a warmth of a different sort. People were out using their classics, celebrating them, not minding if they got a bit grubby en route. Vintage cars, family cars, sports cars, resto-mods, hot rods, Americana,
British Leylandia, Austin Sevens, supercars – all pre-1990 motoring life was there, along with a few later machines that somehow slipped in.
Nothing to see here
What I did not see, though – at least, not knowingly, and I was looking for them – were any electric classics. Putting an electric motor in your old car is deemed by some to be the future of classic motoring, but much of the noise about this comes from those who may not be true classic-car nuts themselves. They like the style and the coolness of classics, but they don’t necessarily like the full hydrocarbon-fuelled, oil-lubricated, mechanicallyoscillating, sound-generating, often-aromatic, hands-on experience of driving a classic car.
That, as we know, is central to the appeal of our cars. Without a proper internal-combustion engine our cars are without their hearts. They are mere pictures of what they should be, and their historical integrity is gone. FIVA, the world governing body for old-car matters, agrees. A classic car converted to electricity is no longer a classic car, it says, and should nt benefit from any tax or access concessions granted to classics.
Is that a rather regressive stance to take? I don’t think so. Without its proper engine, a classic car is a bit pointless. There is no soul to make up for the shortcomings in dynamics and comfort it might well have, so why bother? At the end of 2018 I drove Aston Martin Works’ electric DB6 Volante. It was still in the development stage, but it did feel somewhat lobotomised. Mere traces of its previous personality remained in place, even though there was plenty of high-torque pace on offer.
The counter argument, of course, is that when the authorities ban the use of hydrocarbon-fuelled cars, and/or when fuel is no longer readily available, we’ll still have the chance to drive something that links us to the old days. It might be the best of a bad job. That day will very likely come, although perhaps not in my lifetime nor that of many in the undeniably ageing demographic of classic enthusiasts.
So, I say we shouldn’t be too quick to electrify our cherished classics, and the thousands who were in attendance at Brooklands would probably agree with me. Let’s enjoy them as they are for as long as we can, until one day it might become impossible to do so. Of one thing I and my breakfast companions were sure, though: having been born in the Fifties, as far as motoring is concerned, we have been privileged to live through the very best of times.
And we’ll enjoy it for as long as we can.