Back (again) to the future: driving an electric DeLorean
A former glam rock record producer from Dorset has made his DeLorean into an EV - and we've driven it
An email arrived: ‘Could you nip down to Dorset and check out some bloke who says he’s an old rock and roller who’s fitting an electric powertrain into an old car?’
Electric cars are here to stay and I’m happy to review them, but retrofitting classics with electric powertrains seems pointless. Yes, you could drive an electric E-Type in central London, but why would you want to drive in London anyway? But down in Poole, things are looking up. For starters, Phil Wainman really is rock and roll. He was a session drummer in the 1960s and then went on to write and produce for glam rock bands such as Sweet, Mud and the Bay City Rollers.
Second, the car that’s being electrified is a DeLorean. This seems entirely appropriate to me. A car that is best known today for its starring role in Back to the Future should probably have had an alternative powerplant anyway. Also, the car could only be improved by chucking out its hefty and ineffective original PRV V6 engine. But before we explore, and indeed drive, this electrified DeLorean, a question needs to be asked first: why?
“I’ve always been interested in electric cars,” says Wainman. “In the early ’80s, I almost imported an electric car kit based on a MG TD that was built in Minnesota. I joined the Electric Car Association in the 1990s. I’m member number 77. “Converting a DeLorean to electric drive just seemed like the perfect project. I bought this one for $19,000 in the US and shipped it over. It was painted red and in a bit of a state.”
We’re at the premises of Castleman Auto Repairs, whose managing director Clint Townsend has been responsible for the creation of the DeLorean EV. “At first, Clint wasn’t too keen,” says Wainman. “I persuaded him by pointing out that it was his future and he ought to learn about the technology.”
Townsend is now a bit of a nerd on electric powertrains. He’s also one heck of a good mechanic/fabricator. Not only has he transformed this once-knackered DeLorean into a virtually concours example, but he has also carried out this conversion to a stunning standard.
“The electrical components, including motor, battery and control systems, are all from Tesla,” explains Townsend, “provided by a company in Bristol called Zero EV.”
If you’re not well up on DeLoreans, I’ll just remind you that the car was engineered by Lotus and, like an Esprit, features a steel backbone chassis with a glassfibre monocoque attached to it. The DeLorean’s famous stainless steel outer panels are bolted to the glassfibre monocoque.
What’s impressive is how neatly all the Tesla components have fitted. “The electric motor itself is what Tesla refers to as the ‘small drive unit’, and this particular one came from a Model S P70D. It’s actually the front motor,” says Townsend.
He had to fabricate new mounts and various brackets, but it looks like the motor unit was designed for this chassis. The driveshafts are perfectly parallel, for example. Wainman (who’s very much involved in the project) and Townsend have split the Tesla’s batteries and fitted a batch in the rear of the DeLorean and another in the front, although they haven’t managed to fit the entire complement of batteries from the P70D and are missing a couple of cells.
“One of the big challenges has been the cooling for the motor, inverter and other components,” says Townsend. “We’ve fitted a pair of radiators in the car’s nose but getting the right amount of cooling flow has been a matter of trial and error. That’s been the case on a lot of the car, in fact.”
Another example is the wiring. Getting 21st-century electronics to have a dialogue with late ’70s and early ’80s analogue systems is a mighty challenge. Townsend says: “We’ve had to design our own CAN bus [controller area network] to enable everything to work. We’ve also built our own digital instrument panel, but we’re still working on that because it keeps overheating.”
Time for my first ever drive in a DeLorean. The car has been fitted with electric power steering from a Toyota Auris and, according to Townsend, it’s a huge improvement: “We haven’t had a weighing session yet but the original car had an automatic gearbox which, with the 180kg PRV V6, weighed a lot. I won’t be surprised if the electric conversion is no heavier.”
You activate the DeLorean by pressing a red start button, then by moving a lever to select D. The lever is a work of art, and was designed and built by Wainman. He says: “Some people think it’s from a boat; others [including Goodwin] guess that it’s from an aeroplane.”
The DeLorean glides magically away from the kerb. No creaks or rattles. Part of the reason for the original car failing in the showroom was its feeble performance given the asking price. Townsend reckons the project is 80% there and that there’s more performance to come with some software changes. This and the fact that Wainman has spent £200,000 of his own cash on the project prevent me from giving the DeLorean a more thorough foot full of, er, volts.
I’m very much looking forward to a promised proper go in the DeLorean EV when it’s finished. Its energy comes from lithium ion; I’m not sure where 73-year-old Wainman gets his from. He’s fantastic company, dynamic and hugely likeable.
The next project that he has lined up is electrifying an E-Type Jaguar that’s sitting in pieces in Townsend’s workshop. I spare him my views on electrified E-Types. You don’t have a pop at a bloke who owns both a 1958 and 1965 Corvette and who wrote the Bay City Rollers’ Bye Bye Baby.
-Bolt-on battery power-
Bristol-based Zero EV was set up in March last year by young engineers Chris Hazell and Alex Dawood and specialises in supplying EV powertrains, hardware and software to those carrying out conversions. “We started because we were asked to build three electric stunt cars for a hotel in Macau. No one else wanted the job so we took it on. We’ve also built the first electric car for the world drifting championships.” They’ll sell you a complete Tesla small drive unit kit for £7995. More importantly, they’ll provide helpful advice on how to incorporate it into a project.
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