I can attest to the sheer brutish durability of the El Camino, one of the most functional (and unfairly maligned) cars ever to come out of Detroit. My father had a series of three of them in the late 70's and early 80's. He'd buy a crummy one for a few hundred dollars, then add another hundred thousand or so miles to it before junking it. That said, the El Camino wasn't exactly a paragon of green technology (except for Bill Clinton's, which reportedly had AstroTurf in the back).
Enter Tom Leitschuh, a tinkerer extraordinaire who brought his El Camino into the modern era:
Leitschuh, an electronics controls engineer and owner of TDL Electronics, got to work. The project went pretty quickly, taking about 200 hours of his time over the course of six weeks. He got some help with donations from QuickCable and some hired hands to help with welding and fabrication. The tab came to roughly $30,000, which included the cost of the car and a transmission rebuild. The lion’s share of the bill went to the 46 lithium-ferrite phosphate batteries that cost him $18,000. They’re located over the front and rear axles. Because Leitschuh yanked the engine, radiator and other archaic equipment, the weight penalty for the batteries is just 750 pounds.
Perhaps Leitschuh could one-up Bill Clinton by planting some real turf in the bed of his Green Camino.
