When it comes to electric vehicles or hybrids — homebuilts or manufactured — the standard fare tends to be boring econoboxes, pickups, or whatever. There is of course an exception in the Tesla Roadster, and other prototypes that have gained some notoriety, like the T-Zero and the WrightSpeed X1 EV, but for the most part the thought of an electric car doesn’t make your heart beat faster like a fine motorcar should.
But then the other day I bumped into the website for a company in Van Nuys, CA, that specializes in converting sports cars — specifically Porsches — to electric power. EvPorsche.com will do the conversion work on your Porsche, a new Porsche, or will source a Porsche donor car. From the photos and the specs, it looks like they know what they’re doing, and do a very professional conversion. But hacking up a Porsche to put an electric motor and a ton of batteries… That borders on sacrilege.
The website lists several different models with prices; donor car conversions start at $48,000. A 911 or 959 runs $65,000, or if you want to go all out, spring for a Carrera GT or GT-1 in the mid $90,000 range. But wait… A new Carrera GT sells for over $400,000, and when new a GT1 went for over a million. How can this be????
Turns out that the car they are selling as a GT1 is a 911 with a body kit (compare the photos on the EvPorsche.com site with those of the real thing.) But the Carrera GT, that’s got to be real, doesn’t it? Nope, that’s an imitation also. Apparently they take a Boxter, lengthen the chassis & slap the $14,000 worth of fiberglass body parts on (front clip, hood, mirror shells, door skins, rear clip, rear lid, wing & winglid), and voilà, a poor man’s Carrera. Not good enough to fool someone who knows what they’re looking for, but good enough to fool most.
