As instantly recognizable as a Lamborghini Countach, this 1976 CitiCar has been upgraded with a V12 and… no, wait a minute. It’s been updated with Nissan Leaf batteries, saving several hundred pounds in weight and giving a longer range. There is still work to finish, but it’s usable now. They have it posted here on craigslist in beautiful Portland, Maine, and they’re asking $5,500. Here is the original listing, and thanks to Rocco B. for the tip!
Removing almost 500 pounds of lead-acid batteries has to appeal to those who always question the “green” aspect of EVs when they use those old-school batteries. I’m assuming they didn’t just dump them into the Portland Harbor but recycled them in the proper way. They say that two modules out of a 2018 Nissan Leaf were used to replace the former battery hoard, but I’m not sure why only two modules were used. Each one weighs around nine pounds or so, and that’s well over 400 pounds in weight that was removed.
The biggest thing with an EV is the range, and the original CitiCar, made by Sebring-Vanguard Industries, had around a 40-mile range, give or take. They say this car now has about a 50-mile range, and it would have seemed that using more of the Nissan Leaf battery modules would have given more range? I don’t really know anything about EVs, so that’s probably simplistic thinking on my part. We have EV experts in the Barn Finds family of readers who can fill in the blanks.
Their description is only about 17 pages shorter than Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, so please click on the craigslist link and read it to see if you can decipher all of the EV lingo they use to describe the upgrades. Here’s part of it, “The original 460 lbs of lead acid batteries were replaced by 2 modules from a 2018 nissan leaf that have >95% SOH. This included adding a specialized 350A BMS, HV contactor, Meanwell 1600W charger, cooling, 150A curtis controller and much more.” I know that SOH, or SoH, means State of Health, as in how much life the batteries have left.
Sadly, although this car is functioning now, it needs some debugging to be a long-term daily driver. They say it gets hot after four or five miles, and that doesn’t work for most people, unless you’re using it around the neighborhood, which is the best place to use a CitiCar anyway. There is a perfectly-sized trailer also available if the next owner wants that, although a price isn’t given. Any thoughts on this “upgraded” CitiCar? Is it worth tinkering with to get it working as it should?
Excellent and informative write-up, Scotty, as always! There has been one of these on display in front of a car wash for years in Nashville, located on Old Hickory Boulevard. To my knowledge, it never moves, but this one sure gets attention from the street as people pass by! I’m guessing this mini car has been sitting here for at least a couple of decades.
You’re way too kind, Mike, thanks! Oh man, I’m in on a yellow one! Although maybe not one that’s sat outside for two decades, ha. I wonder if Bob_in_TN knows this car wash?
I think this seller is going to have to provide many more photos showing the work that they’ve done to interest folks online. They don’t show any of the guts at all, which is unfortunate.
I just now saw this post. I have certainly been on Old Hickory Boulevard in Nashville, and this yellow bugger vaguely rings a bell, but at the moment I can’t place where exactly it is.
I agree. I like the yellow one!! As for this one. I’d like to know what was done and if it was done right. Maybe they didn’t have room for more “modules”? It’s a nice idea with the updates though. I work with a lot of scissor lifts with my job and let me tell you what…… Those batteries aren’t light!!!
-Dave
There was one of these in Weaverville,California,that I used to see at someone’s house on the main street through town.I assumed that it was
being driven.
I missed the first word (“As”) in the article, resulting in the sentence reading, “instantly recognizable as a Lamborghini Countach…”. Looking at the photo, I thought perhaps a Countach got sandwiched between two semis in a chain reaction collision.
There was a Ford dealer in Ohio that actually had a couple of these for sale when they were new. We had a good laugh, when we stopped to see what in the heck they were.
My wife enjoyed seeing this. Late 70’s she babysat for a local family, they picked her up in a blue one of these, she said as a teenager she was embarrassed to ride in it
There are a few things to like about this vehicle. I imagine it’s super cheap to run, and is probably pretty efficient at the speeds it’s normally used at (side streets, not freeways). I’ve often thought that a vehicle with flat panels might be an smart choice – the ability to replace body parts with flat pieces of “whatever is on hand” seems like the kinda design that could carry itself through tough economic times.
That said, this, to me, looks like it was a gold cart that has been retrofitted with an enclosed body. If it was inexpensive to acquire, I’d maybe use just to tool around the nearby neighborhood(s), but I think I’d be hard pressed to try and use it as a “real” car. The frankenbattery setup sounds like a long-term challenge for an electrically-inclined tinkerer.
A neat quirk of automotive history, not worth $7500 to me, but maybe as EVs become more ubiquitous, old EVs like this will appreciate to collector status.
Looks just like my old citicar, only difference mine had a black seat. I will always tell how pitifully weak these are in hilly terrain. Mine with brand new batteries would barely make it up my 150ft uphill driveway. Lots of fun on the flatland and I got it up to 46 MPH once. Pretty much a golf cart that’s street legal. A model T of electric cars.
Frank Hilker was a long time car dealer in Chicago Heights Illinois. First Studebakers, then later Oldsmobiles. Both were a tough sell in a town that had a Ford stamping plant. Later, in his declining years, he was selling these things out of a closed Pizza Hut location on western avenue in park forest. i have a mechanic friend that still has an operational one in his collection.
Nice upgraded golf cart to drive around in “The Villages” or any other gated/golf community. (I know The Villages is not gated)
I used to live on Western Ave. in Park Forest. (although on the Will County end, and worked at the NAPA parts store on Western Ave. In the Heights) I don’t remember this guy. Living out west in Nevada now. A flat sided little car sounds challenging with our winds. Just don’t get in front of me when I’m in a hurry!
It’s so ugly, it’s cute. Kind off offbeat cool as well.
Hard sell at $5500 if it gets “hot” after a few miles!
Hey Wayne, here’s where I’d use that 24 volt alternator trick you told me about to cycle power into those power modules. Think I’d use a small pulley to cut down on the parasitic drag problem that we talked about this morning. A
smaller pulley would spin faster than a larger one and maybe generate more power too. Solar
power? Yeah, I’ve seen one up on
YouTube. A 16 year old kid built
that one about 10 years ago. Wonder if he still drives it. He said that he upped the range to
60 miles using solar panels to
supplement the batteries. And yeah, I did call Florida Polytechnic
University here in Melbourne to see if anyone is working along the same lines I am when it comes to self charging mobility scooters. Haven’t heard anything
yet, but when I do, I’ll let you and
Angel know. As for this thing, it
would make a great test bed for
my experiments. And when the
seller says that it gets hot every
5 miles, it sounds to me that the
the electronics are overheating.
That’s why most all electric vehicles have cooling fans built in
to cool the battery packs and the
charge controllers. Used to call these things door stoppers when
they first came out. Saw 2 or 3 in my town too .
Door stops is what they my used to call TR7s!
I had a new Yellow one back in 1976 for a couple of weeks. The engine could not take the PA hills in my area and would get hot. Eventually the dealer took the car back. Worked great on the flat and I used it to commute my 25 mile commute until it started to heat up. You could’t drive stop with out a crowd gathering.
Good write-up Scotty. I got a chuckle out of the craigslist ad. Lots of information, but unfortunately much of it would make no sense to the average person (i.e., someone not versed in electric vehicle technology). “Model T of electric vehicles”, a good description.