Podington, Bedfordshire - A tiny British battery car from the 1970s has just become the world's quickest street-legal electric vehicle.
Jonny Smith's Enfield 8000, a forgotten city car built on the Isle of Wight in the oil crisis era, stormed through the quarter-mile sprint at Santa Pod on Saturday in a record-breaking 9.86 seconds, posting a speed of 194km/h through the trap. That's quicker than a Lamborghini Aventador, a McLaren 650S, a Porsche 911 Turbo S, Nissan GT-R or even Tesla's poster child for electric excitement, the P90D.
More than that, the previous mark was 10.25 seconds - set by an old Datsun converted to electric power by John Wayland in Portland, Oregon - making Smith's 'Flux Capacitor' the first road-legal battery car to break into the nines! And yet this silly-looking little composite-bodied kei car - just 2800mm long on a 1730mm wheelbase - originally had just 6kW and was designed to travel at no more than 65km/h.
Four years ago it was a flood-damaged write-off - now it has 118 lithium-ion cells, originally designed to power the weapons systems of a Bell Super Cobra attack helicopter and specially produced for this application by Hyperdrive Innovations in Sunderland.
They provide 2000 amps at a sizzling 400 volts to two 230mm permanent-magnet direct current electric motors, each of which delivers 295kW and an incredible 815Nm to the rear axle, taking it from a standstill to 180km/h in six seconds flat - on treaded tyres, with no wheelie bar.
In fact, to qualify for the class, all the competitors had to complete a mandatory 42km drive on public roads in Northamptonshire.
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