Funny, but then he says really moronic type stuff like "this might be the first purpose built electric car" That is just so comically wrong and stupid that I stand in awe that anyone, let alone a car guy, can be so ignorant and stupid. At one time, EVs outsold combustion cars!! There were hundreds of thousands of them in NYC alone. This was in the first years of the 20th century!!!! This is not esoteric knowledge. Jay Lenno has episodes right here on TH-cam of restored models from the early 20th century.
From the thumbnail, I assumed that it was built on the Pacer chassis; until I realized that it was much smaller. The Pacer was the first American attempt at a minivan. Not that they called it a minivan, but the Pacer ads all tried to sell the vehicle on its large amount of interior space.
The hairdryer thing is astounding. I ran around the house turning on all my hair driers. They all cut out after 30 minutes or so. Using a hairdryer is genius/lunatic cost-saving measure, well it would be if it worked.
The laughter over the hair-dryer window defroster is kinda pure joy. Like a child on Christmas Morning when they realize, "yes Virginia, there *is* a Santa Claus".
Well there is right ? Darn bastard kept eating those cookies we put out . Was told to try leaving him some beer but I just didn’t know about that . . Crazy flying reindeer and alcohol 🍺 . . Just not a good mix . . Then there’s them elves
To be fair, the motor probably doesn't like spinning at extremely high speeds, so keeping it down would help with heat generation, current loss, and vibration. Hence, the transmission. Why spend R&D getting a DC brushed motor to spin at 10,000 RPM when you could just make it spin at 4,000 with a gearbox?
The VW Fox wasn't introduced until 1987, but there was an *Audi* Fox from 1973 to 1979, so that's probably where the transmission came from. Also it looks like it has Audi Fox wheels, too.
The VW Fox was imported from Brazil, but here it was called the VW Voyage, the sedan version of our Gol. No, not Golf, Gol. It was built from 1981 to 1996.
To be fair, the Pacer was considered a 'cool' car when it first came out. It wasn't until AMC's corner cutting caught up to them that everyone changed their opinions.
@Barack Obama No EV will ever be cooler than a proper, internal combustion powered car. EVs are nothing but the hopeless pipe-dream of naive eco-freaks.
Even Formula E experimented with gearboxes. One of the early examples of Formula E cars had a 2-speed manual without a clutch (it uses dog box engagement so that works completely fine if you slam the lever hard enough). Turned out it made no difference either way so from there on everyone used single-speed transmission, and notably that now extends to consumer electric cars. The reason to try gearboxes is of course the power band, electric motors have it just like ICEs. But counter-intuitively, electric motor's power band follows the electricity input, it's like it has its own CVT built-in, so making it run efficiently is just a matter of selecting the correct gas pedal position.
Doug Demuro is going to be so mad when he finds out you got to review the ultimate quirk and feature of "built in hair dryer window defroster" before he did
The offer always stands if Doug wants to check it out but he would be hard pressed to beat this video! The first thing I thought when I bought this car was “oh, aging wheels is gonna love this”
That hairdryer tho… No other car quirk I’ve ever seen had me burst out laughing so hard. And the fact that it gets slower when you push the gas pedal, that’s just too damn good 🤣🤣🤣😂
And not only just a hairdryer, but the original one that came with the car. Someone needs to find the company that made that hairdryer. Still working 50 years later.
@@shawnheidingsfelder8179 "Gillette Supermax pro 1400" - I guess they (the company) still exist 🤔🤓 Today I would not expect any 'pro' model of an electrical tool to exceed 5-10 years 😁
@@zerocool6452 I think the first time I saw Robert was the same time I first saw Doug, on Doug's video where he reviews Robert's Trab, so for a while I was extra confused.
I can see the engineers happily rolling the prototype into the main office of Unique Mobility when they had finished building it, and the head engineer saying, "Well, it's nothing like you wanted, but we're ahead of schedule."
TBH when he he said that UM went on being successful I fully expected that was the direction they would have went. Got to say making high end brushless motors for other companies is kind of a step up.
I was 1000% sure that's where the story was headed, and that went up to about 10,000% sure when he said they were still around and successful, especially after that in-house development of brushless motors bit. The true ending blew my dang mind. 🤯
I really, really want the one that had a brushless motor swapped in. And I want to swap the lead acid batteries for a custom lithium pack. It would be, very likely, a usable car!
Here in Brazil, back in 74, there was already prototypes of electric cars by one of our hydroelectric power plants, the Itaipu Gurgel E400. It was released in 81 and could carry 400kg with an autonomy of 80km.
In europe, we have PSA EVs from 1996. Peugeot Partner and 106, Citroen Saxo and Berlingo. All have NiCD 120V-160V batteries with brushed DC motor with regen :)
Deep within one of research institutes in Zhejiang Province, there exists a Shuanghuan Noble that had been stripped down, had its ICE drivetrain ripped out, metal unibody tossed in the trash, and reborn as a composite monocoque EV testbed (probably made 2010ish). I have seen this creation with my own eyes, and all I have to say is..... *_Carbon Fibre Wheego_*
The "more throttle, less hairdryer" is a symptom of very bad voltage droop. The number of batteries powering that car is insufficient to provide full voltage under heavy load. But then, we've always known that the weak point for electric cars (prior to Tesla) was the limited power capacity of the batteries.
Voltage droop is inevitable when you push the battery pack to its discharge rate limit. Lead-acid batteries can deliver 500 amps peak and at 96 volts that's only 48 kilowatts, at that rate the voltage will droop by half. If you pull 200 amps you can expect 20% voltage droop. This becomes progressively less of a problem as you wire more and more batteries in parallel, but then you run the risk of generating millions of amps if you short the pack.
Those windows are just wild. Also the hair dryer was really funny. Liked the editing a lot, cool to mix it with you experiencing the car while you are explaining the things, instead of having two separate blocks where you have to go "In a bit when I will drive the car you will see that and this and that". Nice flow to the video.
They probably wasted the space on purpose, any extra load would likely drop the range to nothing. The battery tunnel seems like a simple solution to carrying a huge pile of lead around, but god help any car you spear in a crash.
This was my first thought. If you put space into a car, it will be used. That "space" available now, was just enough for groceries and short trip to a market. No hauling of cement sacks with this one!
That was truly unique. Thanks for sharing! That air dryer... you can imagine the engineer who came up with that. Rushing to the closest Sears and coming back to his boss with a "problem solved" large grin :-)
A true engineering solution. Looking at the car it looks like the sort of thing that would win an episode of Scrapheap Challenge / Junkyard Wars. Good to hear that the company went on to more successful things.
My 42 Ford GPW Jeep had vacuum wipers and I'm pretty sure that was standard equipment on those. If it was raining going up hill you had to let up on the gas to get the wiper to work. I seem to remember you just had a variable pull lever and the farther you pulled it out the faster the wiper went till you had to hit the gas and it would stop. Probably most were converted to electric motors and who left the windshield up on a nice day anyway.
My father owned a regular Opel Manta back in the 70s. Said it was very nice looking, but was the absolute worst piece of junk he’s ever owned. Caused him to break down in Detroit multiple times, which lead to some interesting stories to say the least.
My college mechanical engineering department had a Solectria Force which was an EV converted Geo Metro with solar panels on the roof and hood. It had a manual trans with clutch just like the Electrek, but it shifted just fine. You could free rev the motor as well. I was a research assistant and they said I could use it for errands so I did. It had the performance of a 50cc scooter.
Best video you’ve ever made! I’m not biased at all! It was super awesome to have Robert come out and review this car. When I bought this car my main goal was to make more people aware of it! It’s just so underrated! So glad I could share it with Robert and all of you!
I really like this ugly car. Seems like it would be fun to modify. Replace the batteries with lithium and put in a bldc motor and controller. Pointless but fun. Lol
Honestly wasn't much more than that. That's how most car companies start out, either that or conversions - the first Teslas were electric-converted Lotus Elises. A lot of other small-volume niche manufacturers use a lot of off-the-shelf parts.
What an awesome car! For an electric car this old, it seems actually pretty good. Minus the bad use of space, the design is quirky but cute and unique, and the improvised solutions and re-using parts from other cars I can't help but think it's lovely
All things considered I would guess that about half of them that were sold ended up in Aspen. Only place I can think of with hippies rich enough to go in on a car like this as their 5th car to get groceries in summer.
I would love to see you either buy one of those non working Electrek uncars and possibly get it running with newer electric car components or build your own out of an AMC Pacer.
That’s an interesting thought I’ll have to look into! At first I thought it was the clutch going bad but the clutch works no problem but only in reverse. This would explain some things
@@TVsoup I owned a VW Fox, the VW transmission should shift pretty effortlessly. In the original car the shift lever goes almost directly into the transmission. It's not the ball and lever system used on the VW 020 transmissions. If you replace the transmission fluid I would use either the VW G070 fluid (strong preference) or Redline MTL. The fluid used has a massive influence on shift quality.
I knew the name Unique Mobility rang a bell! When I first got into my university's solar car program the motor and controller we had were from Unique Mobility. Good motor, but we upgraded to a hubless motor a few years later.
There's a blog out there where a chap in Holland converted his MK1 Reliant Robin to full electric and the car is amazing, abs brilliant workmanship... you could dual power your Reliant or full on leccy conversion with the only major kink in creating an adapter plate to sit between motor and gearbox and mounting a flywheel to the motor to house the clutch if you wanted to use the gearbox.
Robert, this is some of the best writing and delivery I have ever seen from your channel. I actually laughed out loud several times. Thankfully I'm working in an empty office so I don't have to explain the weird 70s electric car that I'm laughing at.
Speaking of electric car's with a manual transmission, the college I went to (tech school) had an electric car with a 5 speed. It was a conversion from some no-name chinese car a bit like the Weego. I think we just left it in 3rd or something to drive around the school lot, I also remember if you revved the "engine" in neutral the thing vibrated horribly. They also had a Ford Ranger converted to electric (not the official Ranger EV) but it didn't run whenever I went to school. I think it too had a 5 speed (and a bed full of 12v lead acid batteries)
@Author B.L. Alley Hahaha, you beat me to it! Although, I was gonna settle for 22mph, just because, ya know, movie runtimes have to be kept reasonable.
A hundred mile range and a top speed of actual highway cruising speeds is very impressive for the tech they were working with. Imagine what this same team could do with modern stuff
I'm really quite impressed with a few things on this car, from a tech testbed perspective. The spinally located battery was a good idea, at least in the notion of weight distribution, etc. The motor controller though, THAT is where you're cooking with gas. In an era where most EVs used field coil rheostats, battery contactor switching and so on, this is a pulse-width-modulated controller... that's the stuff of *modern* EV controllers, at least 10 - 20 years ahead of most others I think.
An AMC Pacer described badly over the phone, with some windows left out and built from junkyard parts. Perfect. Description. 👏 👏 👏 Mic drop moment right there
I thought the thing looked rather like something Homer Simpson would design, if he had lasted at Powell Motors...and when you mentioned the price in todays dollars, Uncle Herb's outraged "EIGHTY-TWO-THOUSAND DOLLARS?!?!" came to mind!
I love this channel. I like to come back every few months, and just binge every new video. Then wait another couple months, then binge all those new videos. Gives me hours of entertainment. FOR FREE!
It looks like a car set in the far future of the year 1999 in a sci fi made in 1971 made out of fiberglass , glue and plywood by an english prop house. Everyone who rides in it wears a multi coloured unitard.
We need to get you to review the new 2021 Opel Manta elektro It's a modern electric car with a 4 speed manual ! It's got a clutch and you can free rev it ! :)
The hair dryer and Pacer over the phone with junkyard parts description made me LMAO...The car was primitive and cobbled together, but very innovative in many ways.
i spotted all the VW parts pretty early on in the video. including the wheels on this one, and one of them from the pictures you posted in the clip. the transmission was also used in the early scirocco and rabbit in the US, for smaller cc carb'd cars. it's a very smart chassis to use because of how simple it is to install and maintain, and you can get away with an incredibly flat and plain floor pan layout
Watching this, my instinct is to try and work out what a quick change system for the batteries would look like so you could run this at a 24h of Lemons race.
@jakethesnake05 that is an actual thing, since Lemon is slang for an old junky car there is an event where people race cheap shitboxes called "*Lemons*"
8:40 - Yup, that door latch is straight out of a VW Fox, just like the gearshift. This car brings back (horrible) memories. I owned a VW Fox (or more specifically, a slightly older Audi Fox before Audi decided they wanted to be the "luxury" brand and kicked the Fox over to VW,) and was attempting to convert my aunt's old broken down Alfa Romeo Spyder into a homebuilt EV much along the lines of this car - yes, including using a literal hair dryer for the window defroster.
the audi and vw foxes were completely different cars, tha audi was a rebadged audi 80 while the vw was a vw gol they imported from brazil to have something to compete with the yugo and hyundai excel
Honestly, if it were 1979, and if I walked into a dealer that had an Electrek side by side with a Citicar, I’d pick the Citicar. Sure, it was built cheaply, but it looked so much more unique, and would have been so much more serviceable.
@LueLou and the Trabant look quite okay agains contempory cars of that time, the problem was that the Idiots keeped building it and rejected a new Model which, again, looked okay for the time, more like the Golf 1 or the First Polo//Audi50 Also, i take your WiLL and raise with a Twike
For some reason my brain thought this video would start with, "This..." Perhaps because it looks like a very unusual car with loads of unique quirks and interesting features
"...looks like an AMC Pacer described over the phone..."
*lost it*
That's the perfect description for it.
This is the line that just about made me lose my breakfast!
That's a classic Jeremy Clarkson line and I'm so glad he used it!
Funny, but then he says really moronic type stuff like "this might be the first purpose built electric car" That is just so comically wrong and stupid that I stand in awe that anyone, let alone a car guy, can be so ignorant and stupid.
At one time, EVs outsold combustion cars!! There were hundreds of thousands of them in NYC alone. This was in the first years of the 20th century!!!! This is not esoteric knowledge. Jay Lenno has episodes right here on TH-cam of restored models from the early 20th century.
From the thumbnail, I assumed that it was built on the Pacer chassis; until I realized that it was much smaller. The Pacer was the first American attempt at a minivan. Not that they called it a minivan, but the Pacer ads all tried to sell the vehicle on its large amount of interior space.
"More Throttle, Less Hairdryer, Less Throttle, More Hairdryer." needs to go on a damn t-shirt.
Ya you won't have to explain to everyone everywhere you go what that means lol
Sounds like something Derek from VGG would say
Put that under a picture of an Elektrek and you've got a winner!
The hairdryer thing is astounding. I ran around the house turning on all my hair driers. They all cut out after 30 minutes or so. Using a hairdryer is genius/lunatic cost-saving measure, well it would be if it worked.
@@JaredConnell Or don't lol
The laughter over the hair-dryer window defroster is kinda pure joy. Like a child on Christmas Morning when they realize, "yes Virginia, there *is* a Santa Claus".
10:39 is the timestamp and it is indeed freaking hilarious!
I believe the British Enfield 8000 did exactly the same thing...
if doug demuro ever sees this he will cream his pants over that quirk and feature.
Oh that hair-dryer system just reminds me of those childhood inventions 🤪
Well there is right ? Darn bastard kept eating those cookies we put out . Was told to try leaving him some beer but I just didn’t know about that . . Crazy flying reindeer and alcohol 🍺 . . Just not a good mix . . Then there’s them elves
“Is that sound the turbo?”
“Close, it’s the hairdryer”
It's amazing that they built an expensive motor speed controller for this and then bolted on a mechanical transmission.
And a hair dryer
To be fair, the motor probably doesn't like spinning at extremely high speeds, so keeping it down would help with heat generation, current loss, and vibration. Hence, the transmission. Why spend R&D getting a DC brushed motor to spin at 10,000 RPM when you could just make it spin at 4,000 with a gearbox?
Also maybe it struggled up hills in high gear
If you're building an expensive motor controller from scratch, why would you have it emit DC rather than three-phase AC and using an induction motor?
simplicity and funding@@bewilderbeestie
Imagine paying $82k for a hairdryer window defroster.
The absolute joy he had when turning it on!
It probably does double duty as cab heating.
Relatively speaking, it sounds buying an Electrek in 1979 would be comparable to buying a Tesla today.
$25k in 1977 actually converts to $113k in today's money.
@@Uninfluenceable and $25k in 1979 would be over $93,000 today - the value proposition was somehow even worse than he let on
This has to be the most 'designed by engineers, and only engineers' car I have ever seen. fantastic.
it's the only car with a builin arm chopper what more could you ask for?🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
You'd think engineers would think to waste less space.
@@Raveseeker engineers can get tunnel vision when it comes to optimizing and designing.
I always wondered where Dilbert's car from the short lived cartoon came from, and this looks like a strong candidate.
I guess that explains why I kinda like its look lol
You can't just throw in Coda as a company they supplied parts for like that, I'm falling off my chair laughing
actually you getting it backwards the uqm motor came from it to make the coda possible think about it
What is Coda?
@@stopthephilosophicalzombie9017 a coda is the electric car version of a coke a cola classic
Cool car. That was interesting.
JerryRigEverything has watched a video of my car. made my day :)
ok
Whats going on mr.clean love your electric humvee videos
didn't expect to find you here
@@joshuas4228 YOU DID NOT JUST CALL HIM M. CLEAN
The VW Fox wasn't introduced until 1987, but there was an *Audi* Fox from 1973 to 1979, so that's probably where the transmission came from. Also it looks like it has Audi Fox wheels, too.
VW sure went a long way with the name "Fox". They still sell a VW Fox in Latin America.
The VW Fox was imported from Brazil, but here it was called the VW Voyage, the sedan version of our Gol. No, not Golf, Gol. It was built from 1981 to 1996.
I’ve owned two VW Fox’s. One sedan and a wagon. I really liked them.
@@ericeinar my family's had two as well, but both wagons. One from 1994 and another from 2000 which they still have
@@fernandoscheibler7004 and to plus info to your comment they had the wagon version there, that was the brazilian VW Parati.
"Do you want a car that looks like a Pacer, but, is even *LESS* cool? Have we got the car for you!"
Want, yes.
To be fair, the Pacer was considered a 'cool' car when it first came out. It wasn't until AMC's corner cutting caught up to them that everyone changed their opinions.
@Barack Obama No EV will ever be cooler than a proper, internal combustion powered car. EVs are nothing but the hopeless pipe-dream of naive eco-freaks.
@@ThatWolfWithShades Than, there were things like the Levi edition, that was just embarrassing.
The thing you missed is modern cars are so bullshit that an AMC Pacer actually is cool, by comparison, now.
Aging Wheels reviews a silly old electric car? It's like Christmas!
MOAR SILLY OLD CARS!!!!
I really do love the whacky cars he finds to review.
christmas in july, AW edition!
Who is christ mas?
@@midloran Christ lives
This is what a Bond villain would give his goons to drive.
@Common Raccoon Procurement contract fell through when the boss fell through the roof.
Yes, but only around his secret island...
That would be some moonraker type of shit.
Noooo this is the Minions car.
@@DL30Creations c r i nge
The fact that this has a 4 speed *MANUAL* transmission might make this my favorite weird dead electric start-up car of all time.
Even Formula E experimented with gearboxes. One of the early examples of Formula E cars had a 2-speed manual without a clutch (it uses dog box engagement so that works completely fine if you slam the lever hard enough). Turned out it made no difference either way so from there on everyone used single-speed transmission, and notably that now extends to consumer electric cars. The reason to try gearboxes is of course the power band, electric motors have it just like ICEs. But counter-intuitively, electric motor's power band follows the electricity input, it's like it has its own CVT built-in, so making it run efficiently is just a matter of selecting the correct gas pedal position.
Could you please name a couple more weird dead electric start-up cars that you know of?
the opel manta gse concept also has a manual which is weird
"...An AMC Pacer described over the phone and built with junkyard parts..." You, sir, are an absolute poet of truth.
Less throttle - more hair dryer: a phrase never spoken on a car review until this one.
Doug Demuro is going to be so mad when he finds out you got to review the ultimate quirk and feature of "built in hair dryer window defroster" before he did
Probably about on the same level as the GAZ pills.
As long as Doug does pleases its sponsor he'll probably won't mind
Doug would die of quirk overloaf
I do like me some freshly baked quirk overloaf.
The offer always stands if Doug wants to check it out but he would be hard pressed to beat this video! The first thing I thought when I bought this car was “oh, aging wheels is gonna love this”
That hairdryer tho… No other car quirk I’ve ever seen had me burst out laughing so hard. And the fact that it gets slower when you push the gas pedal, that’s just too damn good 🤣🤣🤣😂
And not only just a hairdryer, but the original one that came with the car. Someone needs to find the company that made that hairdryer. Still working 50 years later.
@@shawnheidingsfelder8179 "Gillette Supermax pro 1400" - I guess they (the company) still exist 🤔🤓 Today I would not expect any 'pro' model of an electrical tool to exceed 5-10 years 😁
right ?!
Did they supply it with A/C 115V or did they wire it direct to the battery stack D/C 48V ??
@@TheStuartstardust Gillette is mostly known for razors (beard trimmers) now. Use to see commercials all the time for them (back when I had cable).
doug looks a little different today, must be a new haircut
The car is actually bald so...
I know right, I literally thought they were the same person. They look the same they sound the same XD
His accent is different too...hmm
@@midloran That doesn't explain why it has a hair dryer.
@@zerocool6452 I think the first time I saw Robert was the same time I first saw Doug, on Doug's video where he reviews Robert's Trab, so for a while I was extra confused.
I can see the engineers happily rolling the prototype into the main office of Unique Mobility when they had finished building it, and the head engineer saying, "Well, it's nothing like you wanted, but we're ahead of schedule."
The sagging left headlight matches the whole aesthetic of the car perfectly.
It's like the car had a recent stroke.
it's kind of perfect that way.
“AMC pacer described over the phone” had me rolling.
Unique Mobility sounds like the name of a company that makes the electric scooters you find in Wal-Mart
I'm just gonna voice everyone's thoughts for a moment,"lol"
TBH when he he said that UM went on being successful I fully expected that was the direction they would have went. Got to say making high end brushless motors for other companies is kind of a step up.
I was 1000% sure that's where the story was headed, and that went up to about 10,000% sure when he said they were still around and successful, especially after that in-house development of brushless motors bit. The true ending blew my dang mind. 🤯
I really, really want the one that had a brushless motor swapped in. And I want to swap the lead acid batteries for a custom lithium pack.
It would be, very likely, a usable car!
It would be for sure if there were modern lithium pack
Here in Brazil, back in 74, there was already prototypes of electric cars by one of our hydroelectric power plants, the Itaipu Gurgel E400. It was released in 81 and could carry 400kg with an autonomy of 80km.
A HAIRDRYER, my god. And people say Miatas are the official car of hairstylists 💇♀️💇
“Whisper pacer” got me rolling.
This car looks like an AMC Pacer and Grumman LLV unacknowledged lovechild.
But does this catch on fire the way LLVs tend to?
that's exactly what it looks like lol
I saw this very car at a car show today in LA, the guy who owns it moved and I got to see this one from the video. He even free revved it for me
In europe, we have PSA EVs from 1996. Peugeot Partner and 106, Citroen Saxo and Berlingo. All have NiCD 120V-160V batteries with brushed DC motor with regen :)
Deep within one of research institutes in Zhejiang Province, there exists a Shuanghuan Noble that had been stripped down, had its ICE drivetrain ripped out, metal unibody tossed in the trash, and reborn as a composite monocoque EV testbed (probably made 2010ish).
I have seen this creation with my own eyes, and all I have to say is.....
*_Carbon Fibre Wheego_*
Oh my God, that would be incredible for him to see... that would be incredible for anyone to see honestly.
"I did a shift! And it was only a lot of trouble!"
Me every time I hit 3rd in my old toyota pickup
That had me laughing
Considering how many different company's parts are frankensteined in there, they should've called it the UnDead car.
Even comes alive with a spark.
The "more throttle, less hairdryer" is a symptom of very bad voltage droop. The number of batteries powering that car is insufficient to provide full voltage under heavy load. But then, we've always known that the weak point for electric cars (prior to Tesla) was the limited power capacity of the batteries.
Huh? prior to the tesla, the limitation was thinking only in DC. I'm not sure you have a full grasp to give comment
Voltage droop is inevitable when you push the battery pack to its discharge rate limit. Lead-acid batteries can deliver 500 amps peak and at 96 volts that's only 48 kilowatts, at that rate the voltage will droop by half. If you pull 200 amps you can expect 20% voltage droop. This becomes progressively less of a problem as you wire more and more batteries in parallel, but then you run the risk of generating millions of amps if you short the pack.
Those windows are just wild. Also the hair dryer was really funny.
Liked the editing a lot, cool to mix it with you experiencing the car while you are explaining the things, instead of having two separate blocks where you have to go "In a bit when I will drive the car you will see that and this and that". Nice flow to the video.
10:01 Funny part, the heater topic starts at 601 seconds, just to make fun of the Trabant which does not have this cutting edge Gilette technology.
Boris and Natasha were defeated by Moose and Squirrel when they tried to steal this advanced capitalist technology!
They probably wasted the space on purpose, any extra load would likely drop the range to nothing. The battery tunnel seems like a simple solution to carrying a huge pile of lead around, but god help any car you spear in a crash.
This was my first thought. If you put space into a car, it will be used. That "space" available now, was just enough for groceries and short trip to a market. No hauling of cement sacks with this one!
I think they left it for future models, with more battery or better battery tech, sadly it never came in those years.
Lol it's a battering ram.
That was truly unique. Thanks for sharing!
That air dryer... you can imagine the engineer who came up with that. Rushing to the closest Sears and coming back to his boss with a "problem solved" large grin :-)
A true engineering solution. Looking at the car it looks like the sort of thing that would win an episode of Scrapheap Challenge / Junkyard Wars. Good to hear that the company went on to more successful things.
"More throttle, less hair dryer", Anyone remember vacuum powered windshield wipers?
My 42 Ford GPW Jeep had vacuum wipers and I'm pretty sure that was standard equipment on those. If it was raining going up hill you had to let up on the gas to get the wiper to work. I seem to remember you just had a variable pull lever and the farther you pulled it out the faster the wiper went till you had to hit the gas and it would stop. Probably most were converted to electric motors and who left the windshield up on a nice day anyway.
Yes, I've encountered those.
The amount of joy I derive from this channel is criminal.
"...looks like an AMC Pacer described over the phone..."
And you got a new subscriber with that line.
I looks like a Cavalier or a Chevette got REALLY DRUNK with a Pacer. Also, it's an Electric Car with a Manual... It's an enthusiasts dream
"... clutch pedal like you won't find in any other car"
Laughs in Opel Manta E.
look up the car, it really is amazingingly beautiful.
It really is a pretty car! Just searched it up.
Holy crap that thing is beautiful. Want real, real bad.
MANTA MANTA! God I need to find a copy of that movie again :D
My father owned a regular Opel Manta back in the 70s. Said it was very nice looking, but was the absolute worst piece of junk he’s ever owned. Caused him to break down in Detroit multiple times, which lead to some interesting stories to say the least.
Oh, it looks neat!
I love the shed hinges holding the doors on
My college mechanical engineering department had a Solectria Force which was an EV converted Geo Metro with solar panels on the roof and hood. It had a manual trans with clutch just like the Electrek, but it shifted just fine. You could free rev the motor as well. I was a research assistant and they said I could use it for errands so I did. It had the performance of a 50cc scooter.
Haha! I own the electrek in this video and I also have a solectria force! Mine doesn’t have a manual tho… still a really fun car
I love the Subie at 7:00 that slows down to gawk. W… T… F…?
Best video you’ve ever made! I’m not biased at all!
It was super awesome to have Robert come out and review this car. When I bought this car my main goal was to make more people aware of it! It’s just so underrated! So glad I could share it with Robert and all of you!
I really like this ugly car. Seems like it would be fun to modify. Replace the batteries with lithium and put in a bldc motor and controller. Pointless but fun. Lol
So it’s your car ? What is it worth besides what someone would pay
Thanks for sharing it with us TV Soup!
It looks like something someone built homemade in their garage with random parts they found in a junkyard
Yeah, the song " One piece at a time " comes to mind ;-)
Honestly wasn't much more than that. That's how most car companies start out, either that or conversions - the first Teslas were electric-converted Lotus Elises. A lot of other small-volume niche manufacturers use a lot of off-the-shelf parts.
"looks like an AMC Pacer that was described over the phone" 😂🤣 that got me so good 😁
What an awesome car! For an electric car this old, it seems actually pretty good. Minus the bad use of space, the design is quirky but cute and unique, and the improvised solutions and re-using parts from other cars I can't help but think it's lovely
HOLY SHIT BUT DID IT COST SO MUCH
i only watched 40 seconds and im already overwhelmed by the sheer amount of QUIRKS AND FEATURES!
I love that this tiny little car has a huge tunnel down the middle like a HMMWV.
$25,000 1979 Dollars? That's nuts!
A "Luxury" LT RS Camaro in 1978 was like... $4500!
A 1979 Mercedes-Benz 300D was less than $22,000, and a Cadillac Seville was something like $15,500. Its amazing they even sold one of these things
@@11sfr Probably all to Electricity companies who were trying to convince everyone that Nuclear Power and Electric Cars were the future.
All things considered I would guess that about half of them that were sold ended up in Aspen.
Only place I can think of with hippies rich enough to go in on a car like this as their 5th car to get groceries in summer.
I would love to see you either buy one of those non working Electrek uncars and possibly get it running with newer electric car components or build your own out of an AMC Pacer.
I'm so happy that you mentioned it looked like an AMC Pacer.. I love AMC Pacer.
There's a good chance the shifter bushings on the linkages are bad. They're extremely difficult to shift once those go out.
That’s an interesting thought I’ll have to look into! At first I thought it was the clutch going bad but the clutch works no problem but only in reverse. This would explain some things
@@TVsoup when I get home from work I'll try to post the link to the kit that you're going to need. They're cheap so it couldn't hurt.
@@TVsoup I owned a VW Fox, the VW transmission should shift pretty effortlessly. In the original car the shift lever goes almost directly into the transmission. It's not the ball and lever system used on the VW 020 transmissions.
If you replace the transmission fluid I would use either the VW G070 fluid (strong preference) or Redline MTL. The fluid used has a massive influence on shift quality.
"We gotta try out the defrost." *unhinged giggling*
I rarely actually laugh at TH-cam videos, even ones I find really amusing, but your reaction to the windshield defroster got it done. :)
One of the better channels of it's kind if you ask me. You seem to be enjoying yourself.
Being a CO native I can remember seeing one or two of those driving around when I was in high school.
I knew the name Unique Mobility rang a bell! When I first got into my university's solar car program the motor and controller we had were from Unique Mobility. Good motor, but we upgraded to a hubless motor a few years later.
That hair dryer is hilarious. But also super practical. If it goes out, you can just slap in another cheap one.
easier than a heater core replacement in pretty much any other car lol
7:20 Gotta love a car with an integrated arm chopper, in case you'd like to get rid of your least used one.
Its just a thyristor chopper circuit to control flow of current to the armature! Nothing as fancy as a ISIS chopper!
There's a blog out there where a chap in Holland converted his MK1 Reliant Robin to full electric and the car is amazing, abs brilliant workmanship... you could dual power your Reliant or full on leccy conversion with the only major kink in creating an adapter plate to sit between motor and gearbox and mounting a flywheel to the motor to house the clutch if you wanted to use the gearbox.
Love the fact that it's got a battery slot for a row of triple-A:s like a toy car. Lifesize ones as may be, but still.
Wow. This makes a Gremlin look like a masterpiece of design. Jesus H. Christ.
I love the looks. Other favorites: BMW E46 M3, Mitsubishi Galant VR-4, Volvo 1800E.
I've never seen someone who has so much fun with shifting gears in a car
Robert, this is some of the best writing and delivery I have ever seen from your channel. I actually laughed out loud several times. Thankfully I'm working in an empty office so I don't have to explain the weird 70s electric car that I'm laughing at.
Speaking of electric car's with a manual transmission, the college I went to (tech school) had an electric car with a 5 speed. It was a conversion from some no-name chinese car a bit like the Weego. I think we just left it in 3rd or something to drive around the school lot, I also remember if you revved the "engine" in neutral the thing vibrated horribly.
They also had a Ford Ranger converted to electric (not the official Ranger EV) but it didn't run whenever I went to school. I think it too had a 5 speed (and a bed full of 12v lead acid batteries)
I need you to know I love how you introduce us to these weird & quirky cars!!!
Also your love for the odd, weird & odd vehicles is just awesome!!
It looks like it could be the weird uncle of CitiCar that everyone tries to stay far away.
If James "Birdemic" Nguyen remade "Back to the Future," this is what he'd use instead of a DeLorean.
Accurate
LOL. Instead of a Mr. Fusion, it will have a Miss Keurig.
@Author B.L. Alley Hahaha, you beat me to it! Although, I was gonna settle for 22mph, just because, ya know, movie runtimes have to be kept reasonable.
I love yoy H. Fisher 🤣
This is one of the best insults I’ve heard about my car :D
These types of videos bring me joy.
A hundred mile range and a top speed of actual highway cruising speeds is very impressive for the tech they were working with. Imagine what this same team could do with modern stuff
I'm really quite impressed with a few things on this car, from a tech testbed perspective. The spinally located battery was a good idea, at least in the notion of weight distribution, etc.
The motor controller though, THAT is where you're cooking with gas. In an era where most EVs used field coil rheostats, battery contactor switching and so on, this is a pulse-width-modulated controller... that's the stuff of *modern* EV controllers, at least 10 - 20 years ahead of most others I think.
I lost it at the hairdryer window defroster XD
You always showcase the neatest things I've never heard of
I think the gearbox is there to prevent all the "sparking and drama" at higher speeds, what do you think? Lower motor RPM = less wear on the brushes?
An AMC Pacer described badly over the phone, with some windows left out and built from junkyard parts.
Perfect. Description. 👏 👏 👏
Mic drop moment right there
I can't wait for the movie. "Unique Mobility vs. Ferrari"
It would be cool if there was actually a movie called "Electrek vs Tesla"
I thought the thing looked rather like something Homer Simpson would design, if he had lasted at Powell Motors...and when you mentioned the price in todays dollars, Uncle Herb's outraged "EIGHTY-TWO-THOUSAND DOLLARS?!?!" came to mind!
$82k USD in 1991 is $163k today. I think I know which I'd rather pay. Ah screw it, I'll take both.
"This monstrosity costs eighty-two thousand dollars!? What have I done?? I mean the zoo was fun but... I'M RUINED!!" (La Cucaracha plays)
Cue: Homer Simpson's idiotic grin, seated behind the wheel...At least Bart thought his car was "really cool"...@@ordinaryk
What a beautiful car, I'm lucky to be able to see it in person
I love this channel. I like to come back every few months, and just binge every new video. Then wait another couple months, then binge all those new videos. Gives me hours of entertainment. FOR FREE!
It looks like a car set in the far future of the year 1999 in a sci fi made in 1971 made out of fiberglass , glue and plywood by an english prop house. Everyone who rides in it wears a multi coloured unitard.
And the women have purple page boy wigs.
Holy moly, I am so glad I stumbled across this channel all that time ago. You bring light and joy into my life!
We need to get you to review the new 2021 Opel Manta elektro
It's a modern electric car with a 4 speed manual !
It's got a clutch and you can free rev it ! :)
The hair dryer and Pacer over the phone with junkyard parts description made me LMAO...The car was primitive and cobbled together, but very innovative in many ways.
i spotted all the VW parts pretty early on in the video. including the wheels on this one, and one of them from the pictures you posted in the clip. the transmission was also used in the early scirocco and rabbit in the US, for smaller cc carb'd cars. it's a very smart chassis to use because of how simple it is to install and maintain, and you can get away with an incredibly flat and plain floor pan layout
oh my god that hood latch pull is the exact same as the one on my 81 celica, i love seing reused interior hardware like that
Watching this, my instinct is to try and work out what a quick change system for the batteries would look like so you could run this at a 24h of Lemons race.
Ah yes, 24hrs of 🍋
2 big scissor jack tables with a bunch of rollers on the top would get you pretty far
@jakethesnake05 that is an actual thing, since Lemon is slang for an old junky car there is an event where people race cheap shitboxes called "*Lemons*"
8:40 - Yup, that door latch is straight out of a VW Fox, just like the gearshift. This car brings back (horrible) memories. I owned a VW Fox (or more specifically, a slightly older Audi Fox before Audi decided they wanted to be the "luxury" brand and kicked the Fox over to VW,) and was attempting to convert my aunt's old broken down Alfa Romeo Spyder into a homebuilt EV much along the lines of this car - yes, including using a literal hair dryer for the window defroster.
the audi and vw foxes were completely different cars, tha audi was a rebadged audi 80 while the vw was a vw gol they imported from brazil to have something to compete with the yugo and hyundai excel
*adds to list of "cars AW has featured I now require" alongside pretty much every car that has been on the channel*
This was brilliance, Robert Dunn at his very best, the hairdryer going was the best TH-cam in ages
Honestly, if it were 1979, and if I walked into a dealer that had an Electrek side by side with a Citicar, I’d pick the Citicar. Sure, it was built cheaply, but it looked so much more unique, and would have been so much more serviceable.
"The Trabant is the ugliest car ever."
USA car designer: "Hold my battery..."
@LueLou (looks up Toyota WiLL)
...What is this. Why is this.
The Trabant might not be the prettiest car ever built, but it is by far not ugly imo.
Fiat Multipla: "Hold my lasagna"
@LueLou and the Trabant look quite okay agains contempory cars of that time, the problem was that the Idiots keeped building it and rejected a new Model which, again, looked okay for the time, more like the Golf 1 or the First Polo//Audi50
Also, i take your WiLL and raise with a Twike
@@p4ndora939 Good grief! I just looked up the Multipla, and it almost makes the Toyota Will look cute... almost.
Judging from the car itself, I'm guessing that "Logic-Off" light is always on...
Some of the jokes in this episode were on point - that carbon emissions one :D
For some reason my brain thought this video would start with, "This..." Perhaps because it looks like a very unusual car with loads of unique quirks and interesting features
4:10 that’s true, the AMC Amitron prototype had regenerative braking in the 60s, although it actually worked properly
How in the hell do you keep finding these cars 😂 absolute madman I'm dummy jelly of your entire collection man, keep it up.