This car project was inspired by the last round of gas price increases. After converting my 1967 corvette EV conversion back to gas in 2000, I decided I wanted another EV. But I wanted one without the compromises involved in a conversion. Plus, I looked at all the cars currently in production, and found that NONE of them weigh less than 2700 lbs. Which means that once I stripped out the engine and associated parts, I’d still be over 2000 lbs for the stripped carcass.

I saw an article in Car & Driver about the Locost homebuilt sports car. It uses a steel space frame made of 16 gauge 1” square tubing. Coincidentally, the same technique used to make the Alfa frame at Cornell in the mid ‘70’s. So I decided to do a ground-up hybrid vehicle, with a small gas engine-generator combination to enable it to cruise indefinitely on gasoline when necessary. Battery-only range will be around 50 miles using Lithium Ion batteries. There’s a spreadsheet that shows the weight budget, but the whole car should only weigh around 1800 pounds.

After almost a year of planning, in May of 2007 I bought a 1988 Fiero as a donor vehicle. It’s been slow going, as I have a full time+ job which occupies most of my time. This build diary shows the step-by-step details.