British startup Charge Cars wants to plant its flag where muscle cars and electric cars meet. The company unveiled a Mustang that’s old on the outside but cutting-edge under the sheet metal. It’s headed to limited production, but the trade-off is that it carries a supercar-like price.
On paper, the Charge Cars-designed Mustang sounds like a model you’d find in the Tesla catalog. Instead of a six- or an eight-cylinder engine that sips fuel from a gas tank, it’s equipped with a 64-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack that zaps motors provided by a company named Arrival. The all-wheel-drive powertrain delivers a massive 885 pound-feet of torque to the four wheels, which results in a four-second sprint from zero to 60 mph. The original Mustang certainly wasn’t slow in its most powerful configuration, but it wasn’t as neck-snappingly quick as this build.
The pack holds enough electricity to deliver about 200 miles of driving range, and it’s compatible with 50-kilowatt DC fast charging. The recreated Mustang handles unlike any other 1960s example because the battery pack lowers its center of gravity, and it features all-wheel drive. Several aftermarket companies have made the Mustang four- or all-wheel drive over the years, but Ford has always kept the model rear-wheel drive.
The electric Mustang shares very few components with its 1960s counterpart, it’s essentially a new car from the ground up, but it looks almost like the real thing because Charge Cars started the build with a reproduction body shell that’s officially licensed by Ford. Its dimensions and proportions have been certified as accurate. While this is certainly not the cheapest way to restore a car, it brings buyers peace of mind because they don’t have to find a donor vehicle, and worry about how much rust was treated or cut out.
The car shown above is only one way to spec the Mustang; buyers can work directly with Charge Cars to design the resto-modded pony car of their dreams. We haven’t seen photos of the interior yet, but we expect it’s a hand-crafted blend of old and new where chrome meets screens.
Production of the classic Mustang’s electric clone is limited to 499 examples available on a first come, first served basis. Pricing starts at 300,000 British pounds, a hefty sum which represents approximately $381,000. That’s a tough pill to swallow, even for a cool, resto-modded muscle car. If you’d choose the Mustang over a comparably-priced Rolls-Royce, keep in mind Charge Cars asks buyers for a refundable, 5,000-pound (about $6,300) deposit. Deliveries will begin in September 2019
