1949 Tesla Powered Mercury Coupe
















1949 Mercury Coupe with Modern Tesla Power by ICON

I Know... Not a Chopped Kustom
But was wandering what you guys & galls think about this one? This Merc is built by Jonathan Ward and his LA-based shop/ICON brand. Mixing the old car bodies with a modern drive train, in this case an electric.

If you look into the engine bay you will find a V8 shaped dual-electric motor running on a Tesla Performance 85kWh battery setup. Power & torque figures: 400hp and 470lb-ft.

Me.. as a real petrolhead, not convinced (yet) that this is going to be the future...
​Still feeling some resistance in my brain, to come along...
But, I sure dig the innovation and built skills that come with this project.

What do you think?

Images courtesy of ICON 
Source: Petrolicious

6 comments:

  1. Hi Skip, I'm a petrolhead too and I like our loved old cars because of their
    look and style and shape and.. and of course because of their brabbling sound.

    If in the future we can't ride it any more becaus of gasoline is too expensive
    or environmental protection or other prohibitions and restrictions the I think I would
    be happy to have an alternative electric sulution with which I can continue to drive my car.

    Hans

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for your reply Hans! Seen from that environmental issues that would be indeed a good way to keep the option on driving our stuff.
      I would come along if there weren't any other options. But as long as there is, give me the roaring sounds and feeling please ;-)

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  2. Umm, it's electric. Sorry my friend, putting an electric power train in a vintage car, truck, whatever just doesn't work for me. Guess I'm just too old school to go gah gah over this type of thing. I'm not saying that there's not a market for it. I'm just saying, not in my market.

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  3. The idea of electric powered vehicles is not new, it's been tried before in the past. The problem is, the "unintended consequences" of having "electric" everything. As I have mentioned in another blog regarding this issue, while it may be "environmentally friendly" it is anything but practical.

    Let us take this example of "unintended consequences". There is a village of a hundred thousand people living in it. Out of all those people 35 to 42,000 drive electric vehicles. It's a hot Summers day and the village has the A/C going full tilt. Evening comes and the dad or mom or both come home from work. Their car needs charging, along with the other 20,000 or so vehicles in the village.

    So they all plug in, say between five and six p.m. Home A/C are still going, mom turns on the electric range to start diner. Then suddenly everything goes dead. Why? Simply too much draw on the power grid. Everything shuts down. And it just gets worse from there.

    Okay. Done preaching now. But do you folks get the picture?

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  4. I certainly agree on your thoughts/write up JSF. Think its bs to think that generate all power for all using el cars. I know we need to be more causious on our earth, but think there are better options to do that besides the lobby on "we all need to drive electric". So I wont in the coming years... ;-)

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