Tonight I saw something about a junkyard on TV and it reminded me of our friend Forrest Woods' 1980 electric cars - made by Renault, they were called the Lectric Leopard. He bought two at the same time, a blue one and a yellow one.



Here is a good video about these cars:



The Leopard was powered by big heavy storage batteries that were recharged by plugging into the wall. They can go 65 mph, and get 59 miles to the charging session. It was a good commuting car, and Woody used his for several years.



I don't have any idea how much his electric bills went up, but I'm sure he figured out the savings over buying gas.

Then, one day, he decided to convert one of his cars to a gasoline-powered engine. He was an aerospace engineer working in computer programming, but had all confidence in his own ability. This was probably around 1990, and the Internet wasn't such a big thing. Somewhere, Woody got a list of all the parts he would need and invited my husband and I to accompany him to the junk yard to get the parts.

I think Woody thought he'd go in with the list and the junk yard counter man would start plunking the parts in front of us. No, if you go to a junk yard for car parts you'd better bring your wrench and a box so you can wander around out there amongst the clunkers and find what you need.



As daunting as it sounds, and I don't know if Woody actually succeeded in to doing it all himself, he did succeed, and drove that converted car for many more years.