Austin powers! Retired lecturer converts noisy 1934 open-top Austin Seven tourer into an eco-friendly electric runabout that uses batteries
- David Willis, 84, transformed his 1934 Austin Seven into a modern electric car
- Original 747cc petrol engine swapped for Chinese 10KW electric motor for £1.6k
- Top speed of 40mph and a full charge gives it around two hours of driving time
It’s a classic from a bygone era of motoring.
But while David Wallis’s 1934 Austin Seven might look its age from the outside, under the hood it’s a thoroughly modern electric car that meets the most stringent emissions rules.
The 84-year-old retired lecturer has spent the past six months in his home workshop converting the vintage open-top tourer to run on electricity.
David Wallis’s 1934 Austin Seven might look its age from the outside, under the hood it’s a thoroughly modern electric car
The transformed car meets the most stringent emissions rules. Pictured: The original Austin Seven wiring
The 84-year-old retired lecturer (pictured with wife Maureen on holiday in Singapore in 2015) has spent the past six months in his home workshop converting the vintage open-top tourer to run on electricity
He bought an immaculate example of auto designer Herbert Austin’s ‘affordable car’ – originally built to put motoring within the reach of ordinary people between the wars – for £12,000 last year.
‘I was driving around like Toad of Toad Hall,’ said Mr Wallis, from Cheadle Hulme, near Manchester. ‘But it didn’t excite me.’ So the great-grandfather, whose background is in electrical engineering, decided to turn it into a conversion project.
He found a suitable 10KW electrical motor for £1,600 in China and substituted it for the original 747cc petrol engine.
The hardest part of the project was designing and building the components needed to send the electrical power to the drivetrain turning the wheels.
He bought an immaculate example of auto designer Herbert Austin’s ‘affordable car’ for £12,000 last year
He found a suitable 10KW electrical motor for £1,600 in China and substituted it for the original 747cc petrol engine
Mr Wallis (pictured with wife Maureen in 2020) said the car sounds ‘like a sewing machine’
It was made more challenging by the fact that Mr Wallis did the conversion without harming the original bodywork – so even drilling new holes was ruled out. The car now runs on 28 rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, as used in the Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.
The electrified Seven has a top speed of 40mph and a full charge gives it around two hours of driving time.
Unfortunately the car sounds ‘like a sewing machine’, said Mr Wallis, who took on the project as a much-needed diversion from the strains of caring for his wife Maureen, 82, who has late-stage dementia.
So he uses a speaker linked to his mobile that lets him to make the Seven sound like a full-throated Ferrari or a Bugatti.
He took on the project as a much-needed diversion from the strains of caring for his wife Maureen who has late-stage dementia (pictured on their wedding day in Bradford in 1961)