ELECTRIC PORSCHE 356 KIT

Over time, we believe it made its way from Germany to the US, before jetting to Adelaide where it was stripped and converted to right hand drive with ambitions of becoming a modified “Outlaw” 356, before ultimately making its way to a Melbourne collector.

By the time we found the car, it’d certainly had a life. Over the years, the original Aetna blue paint had made way for white, and then matte grey. The engine had long disappeared, and some body restoration had been undertaken, presumably due to rust. The car was complete, but rough, and mostly in boxes. 

Although daunting, the more we stared at it, the more we realized how solid the foundations really were, and how spectacular it could be as a re-imagined modern EV.

With the car shipped up to Sydney, we started by unwrapping the window glass from layers of patinaed newspaper featuring the imminent fall of the Berlin Wall plastered over the front page. This car had been out of action a very long time. It was time to get it back on the road.

Planning the electrification

The first order of business was to plan the electric drivetrain. 

We set some ground rules, which apply to any electric conversion we undertake:

• Direct drive: the gearbox of a 60+ year old vehicle isn’t designed for the torque profile of a modern electric motor. Maintaining an original gearbox as part of an electric drivetrain comes with significant reliability compromises that we are not willing to make. Ask us how we know.

• Off-the-shelf: we would only use new, warrantied components. No salvaged parts from crashed electric vehicles.

• High voltage: the traction packs must run at 350V or more, for compatibility with ultra-fast charging networks and to allow use of compact, high gauge wiring throughout.

We connected with Anthony Abbot of Halley Abbot in Buckinghamshire, UK. The Abbot family is a dynasty of Porsche expertise, and Anthony comes from years of high-tech design experience as a senior engineer with championship-winning Mercedes and Red Bull Racing Formula One teams.

Anthony had been dreaming of designing a scalable direct-drive electric conversion platform, and was seeking to collaborate on a 356 conversion. It was clear we were highly aligned in our engineering principles, and agreed to put our heads together and get to work.

The world's first direct-drive 356

There was significant trailblazing in this plan.

Although more robust, direct-drive EV conversions are significantly more complex than bolting an electric motor to an original gearbox. There are less than a handful of electric 356 conversions in the world, and none of them are direct drive. This was going to be a world first.

Note: the unused gearbox out of our car is to be donated to another 356 EV which has recently broken its own. Thank you for your noble sacrifice.

The 356 also presents substantial packaging challenges. Compared to e.g. the large, boxy layout of a body-on-chassis Land Rover, the 356 has a body of complex, compound curves wrapping a compact, monocoque chassis. Squeezing everything into such a small irregular space was going to involve a lot of head scratching.

Before we got too ahead of ourselves, our first challenge was geographical and logistical. it was the middle of a global pandemic, we were with our car in Sydney, Halley Abbot was in central England, and the fabrication team was in Johannesburg, South Africa. 

A cross-continental electric endeavour