They turn '49 Mercurys and Shelby Cobras into EVs, one Tesla carcass at a time
In a garage near South Los Angeles, metal fabricator Greg Abbott fits battery packs borrowed from a decommissioned Fiat 500E under the hood of a 1965 Mustang.
In Oceanside, Calif., former AAMCO mechanic Matthew Hauber combines the suspension system and battery packs from a totaled Tesla to make an 800-horsepower, all-wheel-drive Shelby Cobra.
In an unlikely marriage of classic car culture and green technology, sophisticated hot-rodders - mostly men, mostly Californians - are cannibalizing crashed electric cars and using their batteries to create electrified sports cars and muscle cars.
As comfortable wielding an ohmmeter as a spark-plug wrench, they are expanding the automotive world's consciousness about what can be done in the electric-vehicle space - and making good money doing it. Their price can run from $30,000 for a do-it-yourself conversion kit for a VW Bug to several hundred thousand dollars for a fully customized, up-from-the-tires EV overhaul.
"These guys are
