Enfield 8000
British battery-electric city car From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Enfield 8000 is a two-seater battery-electric city car, introduced in 1973 and developed in the United Kingdom by Isle of Wight company Enfield Automotive, owned by Greek millionaire Giannis Goulandris. The car was designed by a group of Greek and British engineers headed by Constantine Adraktas (Chairman and Managing Technical Director of Enfield) with John Ackroyd as project designer, who later went on to the Thrust 2 project. The prototypes and initial production were built at the Somerton Works in Northwood, near Cowes.[1]
Immediately after its introduction, production was moved to the Greek island of Syros.[2][3] 120 cars were built in total, of which 65 were used by the Electricity Council and electricity boards in the south of England.
Powered by an 8 bhp (6 kW) electric motor and lead-acid batteries, the car has a top speed of around 48 mph (77 km/h) and a range of around 40 miles (64 km). In Autocar's test in 1975 they found it had a usable range of 25 miles (40 km).[4] It could accelerate from 0 to 10 mph (16 km/h) in 1.6 seconds, 20 mph (32 km/h) in 4.7 seconds and 30 mph (48 km/h) in 15.7 seconds. Brakes are by drums front and back.
It has a ladder-type square section tube chassis frame with aluminium alloy body panels stretched over steel frames.[4] It uses suspension parts from the Hillman Imp, doors were adapted from the Mini and a rear axle derived from Reliant three-wheelers.
Neorion
The company had been incorporated into the Greek Neorion company, also owned by Goulandris, and production was transferred to Syros, the company having transformed into a new Greek company, Enfield-Neorion, headquartered in Piraeus. There have been many arguments regarding the reason why Goulandris decided to produce the car in Greece, including conspiracy theories. Thanos Lebesis, then General Manager of Enfield-Neorion, argues that Goulandris had thought that "the company was owned by Greeks, the car was designed by Greeks, so it should also be produced by Greeks".[3] However, it could not be legally sold in Greece due to tax categorization issues connected with electric power, so production was exported to the United Kingdom.[3] Enfield-Neorion developments included a "Jeep" version aiming at the rent-a-car market in the Greek islands, but none could be sold locally.
"Flux Capacitor"
A highly customised Enfield 8000 named "Jonny's Flux Capacitor" was converted by Jonny Smith into a street-legal electric drag racer.[5][6] which for a time claimed to be the world's fastest street legal electric vehicle.[7]
See also
References
External links
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.