As long as I can remember, I have been a certified gearhead.
When I was a baby my parents would plop me in a running car to stop me from
crying and one of my first words was “wheel”. I was obsessed with old VW’s and spent much of
my time pretending to drive my Dad’s ’68 Beetle in the garage. I pestered my
folks every year to take me to the Los Angeles Auto Show as many times as they
could stand it when the show was in town and as soon as I got my license I was
traveling to all the VW and hotrod shows SoCal had to offer. When I finally got
a VW of my own, I spent every spare dime at the local VW parts place to fix up
my ’71 Super Beetle to make it lower, faster, and generally cooler while poring
over car magazines to moon over dream cars I thought I could afford one day if
I made it big. My driver’s license was my ticket to freedom and I was the first
one in line for the drive test at the DMV on the morning of my birthday behind
the wheel of my Mom’s ’82 Eldorado Biarritz. The Super gave way after a few
years to a beautiful gray Mustang 5.0 and my pursuit of horsepower and
adventures on the road was off and running.
Over thirty years later, the automotive scene for teens has
changed a great deal from when I came up in the 1980’s. My kids and their
friends are not in a hurry to get their licenses and mostly are content to use their
folks, Uber, or Lyft to get around. Some do want to drive, but most of them
seem to want a Prius or something even more boring to easily get from Point A
to Point B with no drama. They are after practical, ecologically responsible
transportation rather than the big-cammed, glasspacked, and generally obnoxious
rigs my buddies and I tore around in burning gas as we looked for some
excitement. There are some young gearheads out there but most of them seem to
be into super high tech rides instead of older vintage machines that require a
bit more cash and love to keep on the road.
So how do we get the attention of the kids who really aren’t
into cars while inspiring the kids who are into both vintage iron and new
“green” transportation? The answer came to me when I saw some projects coming
out of the EV West shop in San Diego. EV West has been modifying all sorts of
classics and even more modern sportscars with electric powertrains that use a
combination of parts to create vehicles that truly marry vintage iron with
modern thinking. Zelectric, a company which is also based near San Diego, has
taken that concept a step further by fully restoring vintage Volkswagens and
then repowering them with the kits sold by EV West. The Zelectric cars have
been a hit and are quite sought after. The cars are also attracting media
interest as one of Zelectric’s T2 Buses was featured on the Jay Leno’s Garage
TV show and their monster twin motor Baja Bug took a spin with racing driver
Leh Keen at the wheel on the show “Proving Grounds”.
With building that sort of sizzle in mind locally, I made
the decision that my ’71 Beetle named Clementine could be improved with an EV
West kit. She will be rechristened EClementine to fit her new greener identity
and I will be documenting everything done to make her much cleaner, hopefully
faster, and easy to keep on the road for many years to come. Better yet, to get
some local kids involved I will be working with the Davis Senior High Auto Tech
program and the kids will be doing the conversion under the watchful eye of master
instructor Robert Thayer. The deposit for the EV West kit has been thrown down
so check back in soon as we begin our journey by seeing just how Clementine
performs with her current gasoline power and what sort of impact that old
school combination has on the environment.
