Electrogenic: Triumph Stag & VW Type 2 pick-up
‘The VW goes with a vigour slightly worrying for a Type 2’
We only finished it last night,’ says Electrogenic’s co-founder and restoration guru, Ian Newstead, ‘so it’s not set up properly yet. And it still needs the correct front springs.’ That’s why the Triumph Stag is sitting with a rather nose-up attitude, on account of the lighter weight of its Us-designed, Chinese-made Netgain Hyper 9 motor (109bhp, 173lb ft) relative to the Stag’s original V8.
Look under the Stag’s bonnet, though, and there’s still a nod to the V8 past. Beautifully finished in gold and black, and adorned with Electrogenic’s logo, is a motor cover of obvious V8 shape. It’s a great bit of culture-bridging. Up the other end are 10 Tesla P85 batteries for a range of around 150 miles, while other features in this fully thought-through, if not fully finished, Stag are servo brakes, electric power steering and a working heater using excess heat from the electrical temperature-management system. And there’s a normal gearbox, to which the same usage guidelines apply as for LEC’S Morris
Minor and Land-rover. There’s the same thrum from the motor when it slows down from a rev-blip in neutral, too. Electrogenic plans to make the rev-counter work in what looks like a completely standard cabin, with calibrations up to the motor’s design limit of 10,000rpm. Similarly, the fuel gauge will become a remaining-charge indicator.
Other features will include a display module for electrical parameters, or the alternative of a phone app that will show the same information.
The total conversion cost is likely to be around £35,000 once Electrogenic have done all the sums.
As driven on our test day, the Stag feels brisk, but not addictively torquey, and the steering is decidedly odd pending a sort-out of the front springs. But it works, and it shows great promise.
‘Now you should try the pick-up and discover what the performance should really be,’ suggests Ian.
It has the same motor, mounted in the tail this time obviously, and the battery packs have an ideal location in the side storage areas under the pick-up bed. The Volkswagen is fully sorted and properly calibrated, and it’s a whole lot friskier.
A whole lot more surreal, too, as I peer through its yellow-tinted windows, take in the artificial flowers adorning the windscreen’s dividing pillar and wonder how often the bottle of Jack Daniels is broken into. The vibe goes well with the rat-look rust (lacquered, of course) outside, and the Fuchs-look wheels of excessive diameter. It’s very West Coast US, but it’s also very Marmite, as the door stickers confirm.
It goes with a vigour slightly worrying for a Type 2, and very amusing. A more alternative take on the sometimes piously ‘save-the-planet’ tone of the electric-car lobby is hard to imagine. Eco-hippies of the world, this is your machine.
So, which one blows our fuse?
Choosing a ‘best’ car here is impossible, because they all do different jobs, were built to different
briefs and involve widely differing amounts of cash to create. And you’ll notice that any costs we’ve quoted are quite vague, because so much depends on what a buyer wants and how much work is involved in the conversion – never mind the cost, and condition, of the car to be converted.
All of them prove that converting a classic car to electrical power is a viable idea. It can be a practical one, too, especially if you can have a dedicated charger – typically around 7kw of power – installed at your home. Driving an electric classic is an experience different from that offered by a petrolfuelled classic, but it’s not as different as you might expect. And with a punchy, high-torque motor, the converted car can take on a whole new appeal – never mind the zero emissions, minimal energy cost and the ever more significant feeling that you’re doing the right thing.
But I’ve been told to nominate a favourite. OK: it’s the London Electric Cars Mini, with its Nissan Leaf powertrain. Compact, nippy, punchy, practical and fairly affordable, this is the car nut’s perfect machine for today’s towns and cities. It’s still a Mini, just one from another dimension. Zero-emissions zone, here we come.