Introducing the Electric Duster Project

rmchrgr said

I'm gonna chime in and say that it's a waste of a good Mopar. I think the negativity towards your project may stem from the fact that gearheads are born with gasoline in their veins. We spend our lives refining and improving the effectiveness of the internal combustion engine. That makes us outsiders to the mainstream, no one has a passion for these types of cars like a gearhead. I think many of us may not see a bright future for the gasoline engine given the current economic and environmentally-concerned climate but don't want to see it regulated out of existence by the green types. An electric Duster is blasphemy!

Hey, I'm all for American ingenuity and inventiveness and it looks like your project is well done, but I say leave the good old car bodies out of it, no matter what make.

In all honesty, electric cars kind of bum me out - they have no soul.

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Dude, you're talking to a gearhead, and a Mopar gearhead at that :) I appreciate your comments and I understand, and to a certain extent agree with what you have said. I have 5 A-Bodies and 2 B-Bodies, so I know of what you speak! I have had serious psychological issues doing any modification to my classic Mopar - and have mentioned that in my blog about the project.

When I decided to build an electric car, I first had to decide what vehicle to convert. I could not envision being happy with just any car. My life revolves around Mopar cars. It seemed like driving a Honda or something similar was the real blasphemy. I wouldn't have one with or without it being electric.

So as I was deciding which car to purchase to convert, my thoughts turned to what I already owned. I love the feeling I get when I am able to drive one of my Mopars somewhere. The Duster always attracts a lot of attention. The more I thought about it, the more excited I got about using it for a conversion vehicle. It's actually a natural, and I wrote about that in the blog as well.

Rest assured, this was not a perfect, numbers matching Duster. It took a lot of work to bring it back from the dead in the first place. I don't feel that I am destroying the car. Yes, there is a certain soullessness about having an electric motor in place of the rumbling V8. However, the rest of what the car is, and stands for, will be out on the road being enjoyed. Maybe the soul will live on - we'll see.