Getty Images | Aurich Lawson
Earth Day is April 22, and the usual message – taking care of our planet – has become even more urgent due to the challenges highlighted in the latest IPCC report. This year, Ars looks at the technologies we normally cover, from cars to making chips, and find out how we can increase their sustainability and minimize their impact on the climate.
The term “restomod” first started to take hold in the 1990s. As muscle car enthusiasts looked for ways to improve the performance and reliability of their vintage machines, a cottage industry of people adapting the latest drivetrain and chassis components quickly emerged. These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find a restored late 60s Mustang or Camaro on the road that hasn’t been modified with some sort of modern technology — be it a computer-controlled fuel injection system, an updated brake and suspension system, or even a modern V8 engine.
For some, that may be sacrilege. For others, it’s just about moving with the times.
Over the past decade, a similar trend in restomodding has emerged around electric vehicle technology, although the focus was less on tire melting in the beginning and more on pragmatism and technical curiosity.
“I got involved in rest mod in 2009 and that was an odd time because it was on the heels of the recession,” said Michael Bream of EV West, an EV conversion store in San Marcos, California. “I had read an article about the Roadster that Tesla was developing, and as a computer engineer and hot rodder I was a bit enamored with the technology involved. I wanted to see what was possible with electrical performance.”
“But while doing the research, I noticed I was being a little discouraged,” Bream told Ars. “I was going to call these shops that were working with the techs to talk about horsepower, continuous shifts and things like that, but all they wanted to talk about was how much money I would save by keeping it with OPEC. no one in the run really cares about five or six dollars a gallon of gasoline.”
Because electric car development at the time was still a rounding error in the budgets of most major automakers, Bream also had major problems finding components in the aftermarket, but he said the situation has changed significantly in the years since. .
“Not just in terms of what’s available for the powertrain and batteries, but a lot of other things that builders just had to deal with in the early days. Back then, there weren’t well-developed systems to add power brakes, for example,” Bream said. . “The solution was to put in a vacuum pump to mimic the way it would work with an internal combustion engine, and we used belt-driven hydraulic pumps for the steering assist in the same way. But now, because of cars like the Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Bolt , and the EVs Tesla produces, purpose-built solutions [like electrically driven hydraulic pumps] have been developed at the OE [original equipment] level. That has helped immensely to fine-tune the EV experience. It has also delivered higher quality parts at a lower cost, which in turn has led to greater affordability in the EV restomod market.”
Ford
And the OEMs notice. At last year’s Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) show — a huge aftermarket performance supplier convention held annually in Las Vegas — Ford showcased the F-100 Eluminator concept, a one-off custom build that uses powertrain components from the automaker. Mustang Mach-E GT production EV in a vintage F Series pickup. It’s the latest entry in a succession of performance-oriented EV builds from the automaker, including the all-electric Mustang Cobra Jet 1400 dragster and the Mach-E 1400 drift car prototypes.
“I think this is just the beginning,” said Mark Wilson, Business Operations Manager, vehicle personalization at Ford. “If you look at the life cycle of ICE [internal combustion engine] products in the long run there seems to be an end date on the horizon – a point where they will be phased out. And when that happens, it’s only a matter of time before existing ICE products become obsolete, so to speak.”
“And for products where the engine isn’t quite the centerpiece of the vehicle, that’s going to become more important, Wilson said. “This 1978 F-100 is a prime example of that — the truck itself is cool, but the inline six-cylinder engine that originally it was urgent, it is less. So in a case like this, swapping the powertrain may be less detrimental to the value, nostalgia and overall desirability of the vehicle.”
And Eluminator concept is not just lip service – the two electric traction motors driving the front and rear wheels of the F-100 drive (to a total system output of 480 hp and produce a torque of 634 lb-ft) are now available for purchase by the general public through Ford Performance.
