College kids electrify '39 Pontiac

Retro got big in car design during the 1990s. Volkswagen rolled out its New Beetle, Ford its Thunderbird and son-of-GT, while Chrysler came up with the PT and its loopy Prowler – the only factory hot-rod ever. Everyone who was anyone came in on the act making their old stuff new again.

Sometimes not even their own old stuff – witness BMW’s efforts with probably the most successful and enduring such exercise yet in its rehashed MINI brand.

But none have traced as long a path from old to new as a bunch of environment program students from Virginia’s Roanoke College. In 2010, a group of them founded RC Electric, a club whose mission was to audit and improve energy efficiency across their campus. Around the same time, someone found a 1939 Pontiac DeLuxe Eight wagon rusting away in a garage in nearby Blacksburg.

A little research revealed it to have lived its working life in the employ of the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, ferrying guests to and from the nearby railway station.

After a whip-around, the club bought it for $1500 and some of them set about restoring it. But with a lead-burning Silver Streak straight-eight growling away beneath the hood, it was hardly the most convincing expression of commitment to Mother Earth’s wellbeing, even if it did only displace a modest 249 cubes (that’s 4.1 litres in our talk).

So out came that weighty old hallmark of the industrial age, and in its place will go what will become an equally potent symbol of the 21st century: an electric drivetrain.

The specs? They’re not sure yet. The engine bay remains empty while they work to rustle up the money. RC Electric president Eric Lefevers told the Discovery Channel the club is waiting on a response from the GE Foundation in their bid for a $20,000 grant. As the 50 students involved in the project do the rounds of other potential sponsors, one of their number is already working on the early stages of DC conversion with Californian EV drivetrain company Electro Automotive

Autoweek reports that at this point it looks like the battery pack will come from Trexa or Tesla, while GE looks like coming good with an EV charging station for the Roanoke campus.

RC Electric has its collective heart set on rolling out the finished car in 2014, but they’ve made it known they’ll happily bring it forward if they can.

Are we witnessing the beginnings of a fad here? There’s no shortage of people working on conversion kits for newer models – there are already several companies in Australia who’ll convert small cars like Hyundai’s Getz and the Mazda2, albeit still at considerable cost. But as electric power becomes more efficient, cost-effective, potent and compact, we’ll likely witness a raft of increasingly versatile kits come on stream along the way.

Although, as RC Electric’s progress with its old codger suggests now, we suspect it will be a while before such fare accommodates anything of this vintage.

You can read more about at the college's own website.

Image courtesy of RC Electric

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