I want to start up a new company....

I have always appreciated proper custom cars and bikes, now a very rare sight, but your ideas, NO, NO and thrice NO, please!.

There are one or two companies in the UK converting old saloon cars to electric drive, even apparently Rolls-Royces! Ye Gods!

There are also custom enthusiasts who fit RangeRovers and LandRovers with high suspensions, snorkel air-intakes, enormous roof-racks, bull-bars* and similar expensive, pseudo-safari gimmicks not at all necessary. The results look frankly stupid, even immature; and probably render the cars useless for their intended rugged work and heavy towing roles. As well as probably incurring insurance problems including difficulty find cover, and it being more expensive than for the standard trim.

Such a vehicle converted to electric would also be a very heavy thanks to the massive battery pack needed in already heavy car, giving a low range even on asphalt roads. I'd be surprised if you could find suitable tyres, too.

Its resale value is likely to be far lower than if in standard form; because the principle of a custom car is as the term says: "custom". Anyone wanting a real version would refuse such a wildly modified vehicle, or would buy it at a very depressed price then spend a lot of money restoring it - parts and full respray.

Hundreds if not some thousands of custom bikes and cars have been built in the USA and UK since the 1970s. You see very few now, at least in Britain. Where have they all gone? Scrapyards probably. I fear they may have proven largely unsaleable due to no spares for the modifications, and insurance problems.


By all means restore LandRovers and Range Rovers but please, to original.

If you want to build a wild-looking custom car then build one properly.


Sadly, Jaguar-Landrover now longer build proper models of the LandRover, which was for real work not posing in; and the more luxurious Range-Rover. The latter became known as the "Chelsea Tractor" for being popular with well-off poseurs who could equally well have driven a Ford Escort, but used the Range-Rover as a fashion-accessory despite driving on nothing worse than the gymkhana car-park in a meadow.

To be fair the Range Rover became favoured by the Police and other emergency services for its power and ability to handle rough terrain as well as motorways, in Winter conditions.

Despite being very much a luxury car, the Range-Rover was capable of real off-road work and a British expedition successfully took six slightly modified, first-edition Range-Rovers across the Darien Gap before any road was built there.

One converted as you suggest would barely manage to cross the gymkhana car-park - and anyway would risk mud on its garish paint-work. Let alone well-earned ridicule.


Consequently genuine users of off-road work cars have had to look elsewhere, primarily to Japan. The originals have become sought-after, but mostly by people who either genuinely need their off-road abilities or as enthusiasts who respect them for their developing historical interest and value. I.e., owners who do not want to make them look ridiculous [i]and [/i]of little or no resale value.



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*I am not sure but I think bull-bars have been outlawed in the UK, at least as owner-modifications. I vaguely recall this being discussed in custom-vehicle magazines a long time ago. The objection [i]in law[/i] is the heavy steel frame makes the vehicle potentially even more dangerous to any pedestrian hit by it. I am not entirely convinced it does, but I do think bull-bars are ugly and certainly unnecessary anyway. Even if fitted, unless as OE, it would probably invalidate the owner's insurance against any third-party claim arising from the accident.