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A basic, remixed: Driving an electrical Mercedes SL Pagoda

Who spends nearly half 1,000,000 kilos on an electrified restomod? According to Everrati, it’s a really eclectic bunch.

Many of its clients are within the US; round one-third of them are feminine; and a few don’t but have a driving licence however are as an alternative the lucky beneficiaries of petrolhead mother and father foreseeing a zero-emissions future and ordering an EV basic to make sure their offspring could have one thing really particular to drive. 

Perhaps what’s much more hanging is that some patrons are already on their second or third Everrati.

The Oxfordshire-based electric car specialist has grown impressively since I final drove one among its automobiles, the Porsche 964-based ‘Signature’, nearly three years in the past. 

The mannequin vary now encompasses varied Land Rovers, a Ford GT40 tribute and this Nineteen Sixties Mercedes-Benz SL, which, alongside a brand new ‘Engineering by Everrati’ consultancy division, ensures its workforce has swelled. 

Founder and CEO Justin Lunny smiles as he lists the earlier firms on his workers’ collective CV: McLaren, Bentley, Rimac and Singer are essentially the most spectacular. “People are coming to us, we don’t have to go looking for them,” he says.

While the 911s and GT40s that got here earlier than the SL are able to whipping web sites’ feedback sections and social media platforms into frenzies, maybe this W113-generation SL ‘Pagoda’ is a safer guess: it’s a automotive that hasn’t historically traded on excessive revs and a sonorous soundtrack as a part of the expertise. 

It additionally helps show the idea of a front-engined, rear-wheel-drive automotive with the Everrati powertrain system; Lunny hints at way more to return from the set-up that’s shoehorned into the Pagoda’s compact transmission tunnel. Astons, Jags, Rolls-Royces… The prospects are monumental.

Bring Everrati a donor automotive – it may be a 230, 250 or 280SL – and its straight-six engine and gearbox are eliminated and changed by an electrical motor (made by Helix, whose tech powers the Lotus Evija) and a selection of two batteries: you’ll be able to have 54kWh or 68kWh for a 160-or 200-mile vary respectively.