[First Draft]

During lockdown, I am gainfully employed, but have more free time due to no commuting or "business development" (trans. Big lunches or booze ridden rugby matches as either host or guest).

As a result, I have been falling into the rabbit hole that is YouTube and for whatever reason have latched onto the theme of classic cars being converted to EV drivetrains. I also believe someone on here had a Porsche 911 done, which might have been the one on Fully Charged.

So, a propos of nothing other than killing time, what classic or classics would you convert, money and availability no object?

I'd do

Porsche 914 (orange paint job, please)

1980s BMW 5 Series (E28 in red, my dad was lucky enough to have one as a company car and it's the only registration I can remember apart from my current one)

Triumph GT6 (in some awful but brilliant yellow)

 

[BugOne]

I'll be converting my VW Baja eventually. Don't think now's the right time though. Too expensive.

 

[Neilew]

The old estate like Polo. Just love the shape.

 

[Bullterrier]

I would like my oh so effortlessly practical Passat estate reborn as a pure EV (not that horrible PHEV thing).

 

[dk6780]

I hope that you get a lot of pleasure over either fantasising or the act of building the conversion. You will lose a lot of money, or if you do it all yourself and account for the parts at the higher of what you pay for them or what you could sell them for then you'll have great fun and learn a lot and about break even. Then you'll end up with something that is a plaything that is neither fish nor fowl, more recently done conversions will be better and original cars worth more.

 

[First Draft]

Have you seen what I am converting? E. G. A Porsche 914 for God's sake. People will pay you to take it out of their sight!

 

[Neilew]

I hope that you get a lot of pleasure over either fantasising or the act of building the conversion. You will lose a lot of money, or if you do it all yourself and account for the parts at the higher of what you pay for them or what you could sell them for then you'll have great fun and learn a lot and about break even. Then you'll end up with something that is a plaything that is neither fish nor fowl, more recently done conversions will be better and original cars worth more.

Spoilsport. It doesn't hurt to fantasise.

 

[BimbleEV]

I bought a 1995 RX7 FD for £900 in 2010 and converted that to LS1 power and spent approx. £9K doing the initial conversion. If I'd have fixed the RX7 as it stood it could be worth about that now and the conversion parts have just gone up as LS engines have gotten scarce. Never considered cost though as I learnt a lot doing it and had the pleasure of driving it for 10 years.

I had been waiting to do an EV conversion but as mentioned a decent conversion with the sought after Tesla parts would have cost as much as a new Tesla so inevitably I simply bought the latter

I sold the car earlier this year and just in time as it appears. The money has been invested now so maybe if that pays off I'll have the funds and costs will have come down.

As for a car conversion my friend has a garage and they do a lot of restoration work. More recently a customer had been importing LHD E Types over from the States that required some work. They were being restored and converted to RHD so that of course got me thinking of doing one of those. Probably should have kept the RX7!