When classic cars go electric

We don’t really do ‘tech bros’ in the UK, but if we did Matthew Pearson might just make the grade. A late twentysomething in a smart linen suit and sporting a rakish moustache, he’s the co-founder of a company called Halcyon. It’s an automotive start-up that’s barely two years old but already making waves. A generation ago, Halycon might have been attempting an outré new supercar, but the energy in 2025 is elsewhere. It’s in electrification.

“We want to see classic cars loved and enjoyed, we want to see them on the road,” he explains. “We’re developing our technology so we can unlock electrification for other companies as well, outside automotive as well as within it. We want to give those cars a long and healthy future.”

Halycon, and its parent company Evice, is the latest entrant in a sector that’s quietly revolutionising the formerly rather buttoned-up world of classic cars: electric conversions. What would once have seemed sacrilegious is fast becoming the answer for a new generation that’s repelled by the horrors of late-stage capitalism but still wants an appropriate set of wheels. After all, when it comes to driving, nothing has a lower impact than running an old car whose manufacturing carbon footprint has long since expired. Except, perhaps, one that runs on electricity rather than fossil fuels.

Not that this pivot is entirely altruistic. Halycon is opening its account with a machine that was, in its day, the archetypal tycoon’s car: the Rolls-Royce Corniche. Removing its celebrated but thirsty V8 petrol engine and replacing it with a state-of-the-art, 800-volt, 94kWH electric powertrain costs from £395,000 – excluding the donor car.

Point of fact, it’s a concept that’s been around for a while. Although Elon Musk is synonymous with Tesla – among other things – he didn’t actually found the company. That accolade belongs to Martin Eberhard and JB Straubel, the latter of whom set a world record in his home-made electric Porsche 944, back in 2000. It used lead acid batteries and had a range of around 30 miles. Less than a decade later, a young Croatian engineering prodigy called Mate Rimac set a handful of world records in his converted BMW 3 series. His company is now one of the leading suppliers of electric drivetrains and batteries for the global car industry. (Rimac also developed his own, highly impressive electric hypercar, the 2000bhp Nevera.)

Mate has professed a desire to revisit his old BMW and would no doubt be impressed with the cottage industry that’s springing up to support classic car conversions. Halcyon is eye-catching because although its work on the Rolls-Royce is tantamount to a full bare-metal, ground-up restoration, the co-founders have also developed their own proprietary software.

“That’s the glue that holds everything else together,” Pearson continues. “We work with a number of world-class tier-one suppliers for the key power electronics, items like the motor, drive unit and inverter, and we integrate all of that in such a way that the car really is much greater than the sum of its parts. But we’ve done all the software ourselves and it’s this that imbues the car with its character.” In other words, how the electric power is metered out through the accelerator pedal, an important consideration given its 400bhp-plus power output.

All of which naturally raises some questions. Although the bigger picture clearly and urgently demands change, is it correct to remove the combustion engine from a classic car in favour of an electric powertrain? Much depends on the car in question. A classic Ferrari, for example, is largely defined by its engine, a sonorous work of art to match the lissom curves of its exterior. But Rolls-Royce strived for minimal NVH – noise, vibration and harshness, in industry parlance – from the get-go. As Charles Rolls himself noted, “the electric car is perfectly noiseless and clean. There is no smell or vibration, and they should become very useful when fixed charging stations can be arranged.” That was in April 1900, so we can assume he would have approved of Halycon’s conversion. Not only does the software mean that the power generated by its rear-mounted electric motor can be ‘curated’ for an appropriately wafty Rolls-Royce experience, the suspension and handling have also been tuned accordingly.

“A Rolls-Royce is a silent, automatic vehicle,” Pearson says, “and that’s inherently an electric car. Build out on that and use modern tech, and you can execute a car that’s much closer to the vision the engineers would have had in the Sixties.”

So it suits this car, as electric conversion does with, say, the original Land Rover, Range Rover and Toyota Land Cruiser FJ – all of which are available from another start-up, this one called Inverted. The team there transplants an 80kWh Tesla battery and drive unit into the donor car, and in the case of the Range Rover transforms the decidedly Spartan original with Mocha leather from Scottish company Muirhead, adds Harris Tweed detailing and integrates contemporary essentials such as Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Then there’s Banbury-based Electrogenic, which has tackled the likes of the Citroën DS, Jaguar E-type and Triumph Stag, as well as conducting its own Rolls-Royce conversion, on a 1929 Rolls-Royce Phantom II owned by movie star Jason Momoa. They too combine off-the-shelf motors and batteries with their own proprietary software.

The company was also commissioned to carry out an eye-catching conversion on the DeLorean DMC-12, a notorious industrial failure that survived to become a pop-cultural titan. It uses a 43 kWh battery and 215bhp electric motor that sits snugly behind the cockpit in the space previously reserved for the original’s rather anaemic six-cylinder petrol engine. Given what happened to the car in the Back to the Future trilogy, it looks appropriate in the engine bay. Its range is around 150 miles, enough for a weekend drive without troubling the space-time contiuum. Regenerative braking allows for comfortable one-pedal driving, and the DeLorean finally has the performance its space-age looks promised. The conversion costs from £65k and can be reversed.

Yet you could argue that all of these cars exist outside of their means of propulsion. Far more contentious is AC Cars’ recent Classic Electric Cobra, a reimagining of a car whose incomparable body clothed one of the most riotous V8 engines in history. Then there’s the Porsche 911, a car that supports an entire eco-system of resto-mods, including a handful of electric conversions, but whose flat-six is one of the world’s most famous combustion engines. 

British company Everrati risked the wrath of the global Porsche community by converting the 911 to electric, but the engineering is inescapably thorough. Most of the body is now made of carbon fibre, which helps structural integrity but also reduces weight. Impressively, Everrati’s 911 weighs fractionally less than the original, despite the batteries’ heft, and it preserves most of the 911’s unique handling attributes. The company has also done conversions of the Series II Land Rover, Mercedes 280 SL ‘Pagoda’ and a high-end replica of the Ford GT40. There are no sacred cows here.

“We strip them all the way back to the chassis and view them as if we were redesigning the powertrain for today,” CEO Justin Lunny says. “We remove the oily bits and 3D scan the space and weigh the car again. Then we use CAD to design a new powertrain.” Lunny also confirms that interest in these cars is often from Gen Z, more proof that the centre of gravity is shifting. “When we started, we thought it would be high-end car collectors or the odd thought leader or personality that might be interested. But often it’s folks in their late thirties who wouldn’t necessarily describe themselves as car people. One of our customers was a tech guy in the US who always wanted a Porsche 911, but would never have bought one if it hadn’t been an EV.”

Everrati’s conversions cost around £350k, a sum that would net you various classic 911s and a Macan EV. But as statement cars go, an old-school electric 911 that does its inimitable thing using electrons rather than fossil fuel takes some beating.

“Am I an evangelist? Yes, I think I am,” he says. “As long as we can ensure the cars are still fun, engaging to drive and built properly. If we can have fun and be a bit more sustainable, that’s surely a good thing. Look, I still enjoy driving combustion cars, but in the back of my mind there’s always that thought, ‘how much longer can I keep doing this?’ What we do allows people who love old cars to drive them with a clear conscience.”

Jason Barlow is Top Gear’s long-standing editor-at-large and a former presenter of the TV show. He’s also been a GQ contributing editor for more than two decades and regularly writes for The Sunday Times among many other titles

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