Your first electric car could be a vintage Ford Bronco

“Old cars do nice, but they’re not functional,” Rob Howard told me one day this spring. “People don’t really admit they’re annoying. And you tend to find reasons not to drive them.” Howard isn’t immune to their charms: He has a small collection of cars that he tinkers with, including a 1957 Chevy Bel Air station wagon and a Toyota Land Cruiser from 1988. But to commute to and from work, he admitted, he drives a Rivian R1T electric truck. It’s just easier.

We spoke in his office, not far from San Francisco, surrounded by beautiful old cars that had just been put into working order. Howard is the founder and CEO of a small but growing company called Kindred Motorworks, which engages in restomodding: upgrading classic cars to make them more reliable and roadworthy, with new engines and modern safety features – and, in Kindred’s case, the Option for rechargeable, battery-powered electric motors. The trend isn’t actually new, but it has gained momentum in recent years as electrification technology became available to hobbyists and body shops. It’s now possible to turn an old gas guzzler into an electric car, provided you don’t drive yourself to death in the process. The appeal is obvious: people of all kinds, but especially people with a surplus of money and taste, want to drive around the city in a rare, classic automobile. At the same time, many of these people are increasingly open to switching to electric vehicles. And so a small group of companies have emerged that transform everything from an old Porsche 911 to a vintage VW bus into something you can plug in overnight.

Restomodding isn’t quite as exhilarating as the purist version of car restoration – what you see at car shows known as Concours d’Elegance, which are all about showcasing classic automobiles as if they had just rolled out of the factory. in immaculate condition with original parts. But adding modern power steering and air conditioning and a Bluetooth stereo system to an old car, not to mention an electric drive, isn’t exactly affordable. Florida’s FJ Company caught my eye this year because I wanted to purchase one of their own renovated Land Cruisers (sticker price: $266,800). In the UK, Everrati will electrify an old Porsche, starting at around £240,000 (that’s more than $300,000). Zelectric in San Diego, which has a two-year waiting list, will retrofit your dad’s 1969 Karmann Ghia with disc brakes, LED lights and Tesla batteries (plus 120 horsepower). Kindred has now focused on the humble Ford Bronco.

So far, the customers for electrified restomods are about who you would think: Robert Downey Jr. did an entire TV show, Downey’s dream carsabout his efforts to make his classic car collection more environmentally friendly. Julia Roberts, a representative for Kindred, told me she had pre-ordered one of their electrified VW microbuses. And yes, one of Kindred’s electrified Broncos starts at over 200,000. “It’s a luxury item,” Howard said. “We make no apologies for that, because there is a lot of craftsmanship involved in this matter. A very unique vehicle.”

When I was there, the company was producing four Broncos per month, although Howard said they were on track to soon produce ten per month. In any case, everything that could be produced by 2025 has already been sold out. But Howard caught my attention when he said he planned to limit electric Bronco production to 100 vehicles per year — not because of shortages, he explained, but because Broncos weren’t the only car of interest.