2008 Cadillac Xlr Alpine White Limited Edition Cashmere Interior Nav Heads Up on 2040-cars

Auto blog

We really want to use an eCrate to restomod an old GM car. Here's what we'd build

You hopefully saw the news today of GM's introduction of its Connect and Cruise eCrate motor and battery package, which effectively makes the Bolt's electric motor, battery pack and myriad other elements available to, ah, bolt into a different vehicle. It's the same concept as installing a gasoline-powered crate motor into a classic car, but with electricity and stuff.  This, of course, got us thinking about what we'd stuff the eCrate into. Before we got too ahead of ourselves, however, we discovered that the eCrate battery pack is literally the Bolt EV pack in not only capacity but size and shape. In other words, you need to have enough space in the vehicle to place and/or stuff roughly 60% of a Chevy Bolt's length. It's not a big car, but that's still an awful lot of real estate. There's a reason GM chose to simply plop the pack into the bed and cargo area of old full-size SUVs. Well that, and having a rear suspension beefy enough to handle about 1,000 pounds of batteries.  So after that buzz kill, we still wanted to peruse the GM back catalog for classics we'd love to see transformed into an electric restomod that might be able to swallow all that battery ... maybe ... possibly ... whatever, saws and blow torches exist for a reason.  1971 Buick Riviera Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski: If you’re going to build an electric conversion, why not do it with style? ThatÂ’s why IÂ’m choosing a 1971-1973 Buick Riviera. You know, the one with the big glass boat-tail rear end that ends in a pointy V. Being a rather large vehicle with a big sloping fastback shape, IÂ’m hoping thereÂ’s enough room in the trunk and back seat to pack in the requisite battery pack. That would likely require cutting away some of the metal bulkhead that supports the rear seatback, but not so much that a wee bit of structural bracing couldnÂ’t shore things up. The big 455-cubic-inch Buick V8 up front will obviously have to go. Remember, this was the 1970s, so despite all that displacement, the Riviera only had around 250 horsepower (depending on the year and the trim level). So the electric motorÂ’s 200 horsepower and 266 pound-feet of torque ought to work as an acceptable replacement.   1982 Chevrolet S10 Associate Editor Byron Hurd: OK, so the name "E-10" is already taken by a completely different truck, but let's not let labels get in the way of a fun idea.

Cadillac: The standard of what?

Cadillac's tagline "Standard of the World" goes back to 1908 when it won the Dewar Trophy. While you might think that the moniker and the trophy have something to do with a feat of racing and daring-do against a cadre of British, French, and German marques, it's nothing of the sort. Rather, Cadillac achieved the trophy because of interchangeable parts. The parts they were producing back then were so well-made that Henry Leland, who established Cadillac, was able to disassemble three Model Ks, mix up the parts, and then put together three functioning cars. This amazed the Brits who handed him the trophy, and the "Standard of the World" was born. During the past several months, Cadillac has been producing news releases that would seem as though the company is the Standard of the World: "Cadillac Global Sales Rise 44.2 percent in January ... 18 percent in February ... 22.1 percent in March. . .40.9 percent in April ... 33.8 percent in May ... 7.2 percent in June." Like the Dewar Trophy being about manufacturing not performance, things are not necessarily what they seem. That is, Cadillac's growth is predicated on performance in China, not in the US. Through June, its China sales are 80,357 vehicles for the first five months of 2017, versus 72,073 in the US. The China number is a 75.4-percent year-over-year increase while the US number is a 1.6-percent decrease. For the entire globe, Cadillac has sold 164,174 vehicles. Of them, 65,250 were the XT5. That was followed by the ATS, at 34,277 units. In the US, the XT5 is doing reasonably well, as it has moved 29,798 units during the first six months. The ATS, conversely, is doing not particularly well, as it is down 26.2 percent with sales at just 7,209 for the year so far. To put that into some sort of context, know that Cadillac has sold 7,370 copies of the generally derided XTS, which is down 24.7 percent. The CTS is down 36 percent at 5,059 units, and the only other car in the lineup (we'll pretend that the ELR doesn't exist anymore and it shortly won't), the CT6 sedan, is up 172.7 percent – but they have sold only 5,397 CT6s. While Caddy talks a good game about competing with the likes of the BMW 5 Series and the Mercedes E-Class, know that those two sedans have been sold 17,036 and 20,783 times this year in the US respectively. So what is Cadillac chief Johan de Nysschen to do? According to Reuters, it is to cull the lineup.

Petrolicious eats up Rita Hayworth's 1953 Cadillac Ghia

The automotive industry has seem some wonderful transoceanic collaborations between America and Italy, from the Ford-powered De Tomasos of the 1960s to the alliance between Fiat and Chrysler today. Of course it's also seen unfortunate experiments in between like the Chrysler TC by Maserati and the Pininfarina-bodied Cadillac Allante. But before any of those, there was a beautiful tradition of rebodying American steel at the hands of Italian carrozzerie. And this could easily be among the most gorgeous of them all. It's a Cadillac Series 62 from 1953 with bodywork by Ghia. It's one of only two made, and has a star-studded history. The car was purchased by Aly Khan, prince of the Nizari Ismaili muslims and Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations, for his wife... who just so happened to be the inimitable Rita Hayworth. They split up, but she held on to the car. Today it's part of the permanent collection at the Petersen Automotive Museum in LA, so the videographical artisans at Petrolicious went by to check it out. You'll want to as well in the five-minute short above.