The electric revolution – as VW puts it – is upon us and that raises a lot of questions about our cars past and present. While the future is definitely shaping up to be electric, the older classic cars have a very uncertain fate ahead. What will happen to them, can we just forget about the brilliant cars that fascinated us since we were little? Is there a way to save them? There might be and this BMW 1602 might just be the key.
The car is the end result of the work of the guys from the Electric Classic Cars outfit, with a similarly named YouTube channel. It has recently risen to fame because of a Reddit post, showing it plugged in, to recharge, at a local supermarket. Seeing a BMW 1602 plugged in to a charger is definitely not something you can simply ignore so people started digging around for more info about it. As it turns out, it’s quite an impressive achievement.
The car uses a Netgain Hyper 9 electric motor along with 16 battery modules from LG Chem, adding up to a total of 40 kWh. The electric motor makes 120 HP and 175 lb-ft of torque, numbers slightly better than what the 1602 had when new, namely about 84 HP and 96 lb-ft of torque, on a good day. The 1602e as people online seemingly like to call it, can recharge at up to 6.6 kW so it will take some time to get it full.
The biggest feature it has though, apart from the impeccable paint or the brilliant interior, is the manual gearbox. That’s right, this car has a manual gearbox and you can actually shift gears, something no other EV on the road today has. And this is why this solution might turn out to be the best way to keep our classics alive and on the road.
We know this might ruffle some feathers as some of you can’t imagine driving a classic like this without the smell of unburnt petrol reaching your nostrils, but if ICE cars get banned in most cities, this is one of those miraculous solutions that might just keep you going.
