A Classic Mini Electric Adventure // Jonny Smith CarPervert

yes YouTube with arms outstretched I know I'm Johnny Smith this is the permanent car and today I'm driving a very old fully electrified

mini

and I feel vulnerable but maybe I like to feel vulnerable okay put it in forward motion and I'll go. You don't handle old medieval lemon buds, so what is this? Well, it's a

classic

Mini restored to customer specifications, if you like, and then given the Evie treatment so that the stock transverse engine comes out like the one that had the Minis' built-in gearbox. of yesteryear, under the hood at the front they have an 80 kilowatt brushless

electric

motor that sits very low, as a consequence all the cars have a lower center of gravity and have much better weight distribution than the original Mini , which was already pretty good.

Now, at the moment there isn't a front or a fruit or whatever you call it there, but someone had ordered one of these. It could have some kind of luggage compartment because this space and over the top of the engine this car doesn't I don't have it because this is a show car and being a show car, of course if you order a swindie you can choose the Mini model which You want it in any color, types of rims,

electric

interior trim or batsto sunroof, for example, that depends on This particular car is based on a

mini

city from 1983, but the design of the mini hasn't changed much since it was born in 1959.

The design always celebrated the maximization of space within a short wheelbase. Short overhangs. Incredibly sporty steering. The suspension. Obviously a huge racing pedigree. no power steering because minis never had that just rack and pinion and the reason swindie swindon powertrain chose this as a sort of concept car test because a few years ago they realized that electric powertrains were going to be every more common and They wanted to see how easily they could develop something that could be placed in several cars and the reason they chose a mini is because the boss Raphael, the Frenchman, likes minis and the good thing about minis is that they are universal .

Recognized even if you don't give a damn about cars you still know what a mini is, we're just going around interesting roads that aren't full of speed ramps, you realize how low the original mini is. That's part of the appeal your butts lower to the right height slowly you're in tune with every movement you make on the wheel. I feel very big in this car, it reminds me of my fellow 1275gt when we were in college when there was nothing everywhere. Well, you have three four engines, you still have the original speedometer, which is something minis just didn't have anything.

We believe the Tesla Model 3 has just a touchscreen in the middle with all the information on and clean. Well, where did they get the idea? Looking at the original Mini, this particular car is a test bed for the Swindon powertrain to show what is possible: the boot has more space than the original because they removed the petrol tank, as a consequence there is a large space where the fuel is found. The tank used to be, so I think it's a 200 liter boot, which is actually pretty good for a car. This little mini standard suspension. Standard mini rack and pinion steering.

Non-servo brakes, but remember it has regenerative braking, so it's less stressful on the braking system. because you're recovering energy from that to put back into those batteries because of course it only weighs a little bit more than a standard mini, about 75, he knows more than a standard mini, doing this, I think it weighs less than 800 kilos according to current standards, that's just nothing and that's why you don't necessarily need big brakes because it's not a heavy car, so it still has non-servo brakes, those discs and they actually feel good, the brake pedal is hard, the center of gravity is lower than the old mini and the weight distribution is better than the old mini, I think it has a weight distribution of 5545 and the center of gravity is 45 millimeters lower because it is a stock engine that it sits quite high in the engine bay, now you have a super low compact electric motor because it is I have a steering wheel with non-original liter motor, it is actually smaller than the original mini steering wheel.

Normally I would have a hard time getting my leg under the steering wheel, but it has little bucket seats, motorsport bucket seats, there are so many restoration parts and accessories for this car, so you could make this car to your own specifications. , any type of interior you want, different seat designs, different steering wheels, different switches, different levels of luxurious materials and of course all body panels, even complete bodies, are available in the aftermarket, for which, apart from a few parts and bobs, would be a brand new old car ni 260, about nine seconds, top speed, 80 miles per hour, range about 125 miles, 24 kilowatt hour battery pack that lives in this kind of Invented transmission tunnel, but not like the original mat you use.

I don't really realize now that all those wind and power trains have used their own battery pack in this particular car. They're saying that future cars, I think, will use battery packs from salvaged cars, unless just, for example, or some modules from a Tesla like a For many other

classic

electric car conversion companies, the advantage of that, for Of course, is that you can get second hand stuff that is still under warranty from a salvaged car and also in the future if you need to buy replacement cells you know they come from an OEM regen brake.

Regenerative braking is actually pretty serious. When I release the accelerator pedal, it really bites, so I get a little bit of regenerative energy going back to the battery packs and then of course it's drive-by-wire. The throttle is very sensitive, but I'm sure you can adjust that, on the one hand this may seem like a ridiculously expensive proposition, £79k asking price, but that includes sourcing and restoring the build of a classic mini, so that with 79 thousand pounds you can get a car of your choice. into a mini of your choice restored to your interior and exterior specifications and then the Evie transmission, what this allows you to take a course on is that it allows you to drive a classic car more often than normal.

You can drive a car like a classic every day. mini in congestion and you don't have that horrible feeling that it might not catch you. They're not saying minis are reliable guys. I'm just saying they're old and old stuff may not always have your back and as a big classic car fan. I see both sides of this argument. I see people saying not to remain purists. Classic cars should be as they were a snapshot of history but I also see the restomod element, there is an Eevee restomod movement, it is only growing and I have seen it grow over the last decade and this may encourage people who de Otherwise you wouldn't buy a classic car thinking that yes, I actually like the vintage look, but I want it for a modern lifestyle.

I just want to go in and take a look. switch and it just works, so I can see the appeal of this, yes, you will pay for the privilege, it's a high price, you have to want to do it, you know, this is almost three times the price of a new Mini. II, but it's for a different type of person. I think the other thing that classic electric cars do, of course, is that it means they have more of a place in the future, hopefully, as piston engines could become more and more banned and their use will become more restricted.

I've said this before, a car like this may not be allowed to be driven and let's say central Japan is like around Tokyo, but if it becomes evie then there is a future in being able to use it in a city. vibe which is pretty cool and is part of this wave. I guess it's encouraging people to think about regularly using an old car in the modern world and there are a lot of people out there who I think are fans of classic cars in terms of aesthetics, but they like it. one's idea, but maybe not reality, they are not purists, they are people who see themselves in something old.

I call a look from one. I would like you to see me in one. Do I really want to live with one? Everyday guy, and although I'm one of those people, I think this could help a broader appreciation of classic cars. It's Lippe, you know you feel vulnerable, but then you do it with the old minis because you forget how big everything else is. On the road I don't know why, although the driver on the road is going so fast so close to my head, it's like a natural reaction, I don't know, like he's moving forward now.

I'm not going 80 miles an hour in this wind. That's why he's able to do it, because 80 in a classic mini on British roads in winter feels like 180, so I'm not going to do that. I'm more than happy to go 50. 40 feels much faster. I just looked at the speedometer. Bill, I got to 60 or 70, but at 40 you can imagine a Paddy Hopkirk replica or, you know, a sort of MINI Clubman 1275 clone, you could call it 1275 GE instead of GT, it's a very cold winter's day. I have my heated seat on I have the underfloor heating on I don't know how efficient that is I have the use of a heated windshield and a heated rear window I mean there is a type of electric wine that doesn't matter that because of that the original Mini had a very noisy gearbox or a very whiny gearbox, the same gearbox that some had in the austin allegro, the gear lever here is forward, neutral, reverse.

The summer conversions I've been on of classic cars keep the gearbox so you can still feel like you have some compromise, it's not really necessary because the engine will only have instantaneous torque in any gear so not having a gearbox or almost no gearbox with gears and no clutch means there's less to worry about unless, in theory, If you're wrong, you don't see all the minis on the road anymore. They used to be everywhere. They used to be one of the first cars until the 90's. Well, they stopped producing them in 2000. 20 years ago. I don't. I don't want to directly compare the old mini with the new mini because it's not really fair because if you think rationally you go for the modern car with its long warranty for a fraction of the price, on the one hand you can go out and buy it. something like the new mini e Evie and then have your classic cars on the weekend in standard form or you can do it this way and you can think well, no, actually I want a classic car to be used most of the time, which is where This type of proposal has a place in the moment in which I live my life.

I have a modern electric car as a daily driver and I have my gas-powered classics on weekends and summer days, and that kind of thing actually existed. Experimental electric minis dating back to the 60s when the mini was quite popular, now this car is only 75 kilos more than the original mini, it has better performance than the stock original and you get the charm of the mini, it still feels mini, you know? indicator noise listen, listen to this, it really reminds me of my childhood, a lot of old British cars from the seventies and with that familiar solenoid relay or whatever, oh hi, hi, I've been a tram lining a bit of a trap axis for someone who is quite rich and wants. the mini look that probably lived in a city somewhere that is very interested in ending tailpipe emissions.

I don't know Singapore, Paris, whatever. I could see one of these, you know, tailored to your own tastes, being cool, why don't people spend 50 grand on a wristwatch, so most of us, who maybe don't have that kind of wealth available, it just seems too expensive. I think the fascination for me with the swindie is the bigger picture and the bigger picture is that Swindon Powertrain is looking to the future by developing a plug-and-play box type electric drive train that you can scale up or down and that you can buy to fit anything, and there's an almost gold rush race going on right now for a simple, easy-to-upgrade box system in the aftermarket, boss.

We're trying to do it, a lot of other people are trying to do it and the bottom line is that once you can pull it off and sell it at a competitive price, I think more people will be interested in this whole classic car game. broaden the appeal and that's a good thing. One of the reasons I wanted to come to swing and powertrain is because it's like a company of two halves. Actually, on the one hand, it's about developing electric bikes and powertrains, axle powertrains that fit together. on a multitude of different cars to be modernized and on the other hand, it makes fire-breathing passenger car engines for use in competitions, so it's big on piston power and also easy, it just goes to show that these thingsThey can coexist with those that I am very perverted about cars.

I'd love to know what you think about a controversial project like this. Is it a good idea to convert old cars into evies or should we just leave them? Should we drive more efficient modern vehicles on a daily basis? day, I think the way I sum up the swindie is as a turnkey package which works for some people but for me it's not really my bag, they're not massively minis but big ones where I'm really excited and what I see is especially interesting is what's underneath because the use of the swing and the drivetrain is a guinea pig, like I said they are going to release a full box axle electrical system that is modular in terms of Chu states and you can put anything in there to fulfill it and modernize it. on anything and suddenly I'm enthralled because I want that kind of thing on another classic car and maybe I want to do it myself but it's cool to see what can be achieved in another episode of Carper that I'm going into. there and take a tour of Swindon powertrain because these guys are very interesting, they make a wide range of things from passenger car engines to bicycles and things like that.

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