You Wouldn't Want to Live With a Stock Fiat 124 Spider, So These Guys Made Them Electric

Whether built by Fiat themselves or its original designers at Pininfarina later on, electrical and rust gremlins followed this quintessential lightweight European sports car wherever it went in Europe or North America. But that doesn't mean people should stop driving them, and our friends in the restomod community now have a solution.

Say hello to a little shop in Huntington Beach, California, called ElectricGT. Through their in-house developed eGT Crate electric conversion system, the process of taking finicky and sometimes downright recalcitrant classic cars makes them compliant, easy to live with, and relatively easy to work on. Easy to work on by modern EV standards, at least. You might need a laptop or two to get the tuning right.

Done from scratch in California in a turn-key fashion, the eGT electric drivetrain at least looks the part of a performance engine. That's mostly because the GTe-173 electric crate motor at the heart of it looks like a freaking V8, especially with a Tremec six-speed manual transmission mounted behind it. Granted, a manual gearbox in an electric car is kind of like the appendix in the human body. It usually doesn't hurt anything having it there. But practically, there's no real reason for it to be there, doubly so heaven forbid it breaks.

But if the name of the game is preserving the integrity and the essence of what made classic sports cars great, a setup like this one isn't the worst EV swap in the world. Better still, the 25 kWh Tesla battery pack that powers it is so prevalent in the aftermarket community that some folks out there know it like the back of their hand. When combined with the lightweight, peppy nature of the classic Fiat 124 Spider, that combo of modern power and vintage looks makes for a remarkable duo. Granted, you won't be vying for the EV Cannonball Run fastest time record in one of these. You'll conk out somewhere around 80 miles after a full charge.

Not great by modern EV standards. But as a summertime and weekend toy, you can reliably take out of slumber with as few issues as possible; you'll have considerably fewer headaches driving a turn-key 124 Spider EV swap than you would with one the same as it was when it left Pininfarina's factory. Weighing just 2,390 lbs and with 120 horsepower and 173 lb-ft of torque to work with, you'll probably zip around corners faster in this electric restomod than you would in a stock 124 as well. All around, this is a real win for the EV restomod community.