This week, Steve mulls the prospect of an electric Porker and the underrated joy of renewing club memberships, before swooning over his new Bentley Bentayga long-termer - and it hasn't even arrived yet.
Monday
The current fashion for re-equipping classic cars with electric motors doesn’t sit well with me, although I do make an honourable exception for the Swindon folks who’ve been making city EVs from Issigonis Minis. However, this instinctive dislike of bastardised big-name classics didn’t stop me getting into a serious lather this week when my eye fell on the WEV Coupé, a new, Cornish-built machine with a superb Porsche 356 replica body on an all-new chassis.
This coupé has a higher purpose than simply attracting people who love its lines but can’t afford the real thing: it is ace engineer Neil Yates’ top hat for his ingenious EV skateboard, which is designed to be affordable enough to be built in the tiny numbers the UK’s under-pressure niche vehicle industry will need after 2030. Not too sure exactly how I’ll sneak my latest plan to pay £75k for an electric Porker rep past the bank manager and Steering Committee, but maybe if I announce it now, they’ll get used to the idea.
Tuesday AM
Pinched half an hour of the boss’s time this morning to renew my various club memberships (MAC, BOC, GRRC, VSCC, VMCC and LDMC) and reactivate my competition licence, a handy way to get rid of £600.
This renewals rush occurred because, while reading in bed last night, I noticed that the MAC wants to stage its first evening get-together of 2021 at Shelsley Walsh hillclimb on 4 March, just five weeks’ time.
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Why is this electrified vintage Porsche replica different to all the others? I'm in two minds about electrifying old Porsche's, or replicas of them. On the one hand, you lose the flat-four or flat-six air-cooled motor which is so characterful and mechanically fascinating. On the other hand, you can end up with a car that is faster, way more reliable, cheaper to run and much more usable, that looks exactly the same. So it's a consumer choice. But it's not clear why this one is any different to the others. Surely if you like one electrified classic, you might like them all.
Really Steve? You're boasting about your new free Bentley arriving whilst we are in the midst of a massive economic disaster? What next, you'll be flying to Dubai on an essential business trip to test a new car?
I do tend to find 'real porsche owner's' humblebragging somewhat dull.