Is this absolute heresy or about time? We take a look.
Oxford-based Electrogenic announced this month it has now finalised a ‘World First’ conversion of the Triumph Stag. As you’d expect there are many who are aghast at such behaviour.
In a sense we have some sympathy with them. The Stag has been Britain’s muscle car of choice and rightly so. The burble of the 3.0ltr V8 seduced many of us into loving the car. But that seduction was a false one. The Stag wasn’t nicknamed the ‘Snag’ for nothing. The snag was; the engine. Broken timing chains, blown head gaskets, warped heads, dropped valves, the list was endless and caused many owners to fall out of love with the V8 and replace it with a V6. Love was clearly a passing phase.
Up have stepped the team at Electrogenic. Instead of its intermittently reliable 3.0litr V8, or a poor relation V6, the team have binned all that petrol driven nonsense and instead the Stag gets the company’s 110bhp Hyper9 electric motor producing 173 lb-ft of torque.
Electrogenic have given the purists a problem by keeping the Stag’s original four-speed gearbox instead of relying on a single-gear setup. The battery power in the Stag also continues to drive the rear wheels, another nod to history. The range is said to be good for 150 miles, which on face value looks poor. But let’s all be honest, would any Stag owner dare venture further than that?
In summary, with this conversion you retain all of the beauty of the Giovanni Michelotti design, along with the heavy clutch and dodgy gears, but none of the blown engines and unreliability.
You choose. It’s a tough one!
