The Enfield 8000 is a two-seater

battery-electric A battery electric vehicle (BEV), pure electric vehicle, only-electric vehicle, fully electric vehicle or all-electric vehicle is a type of electric vehicle (EV) that uses electrical energy exclusively from an on-board battery pack to power ...

city car The A-segment is the first category in the passenger car classification system defined by the European Commission. It is used for city cars, the smallest category of passenger cars defined. A-segment sales represented approximately 4.2% of the ...

, introduced in 1973 and developed in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

Isle of Wight The Isle of Wight (Help:IPA/English, /waɪt/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''WYTE'') is an island off the south coast of England which, together with its surrounding uninhabited islets and Skerry, skerries, is also a ceremonial county. T ...

company Enfield Automotive, owned by Greek millionaire Giannis Goulandris. The car was designed by a group of Greek and British engineers headed by Constantine Adraktas (Chairman and Managing Technical Director of Enfield) with John Ackroyd as project designer, who later went on to the Thrust 2 project. The prototypes and initial production were built at the Somerton Works in Northwood, near

Cowes Cowes () is an England, English port, seaport town and civil parish on the Isle of Wight. Cowes is located on the west bank of the estuary of the River Medina, facing the smaller town of East Cowes on the east bank. The two towns are linked b ...

. Immediately after its introduction, production was moved to the Greek island of

Syros Syros ( ), also known as Siros or Syra, is a Greece, Greek island in the Cyclades, in the Aegean Sea. It is south-east of Athens. The area of the island is and at the 2021 census it had 21,124 inhabitants. The largest towns are Ermoupoli, Ano S ...

. 120 cars were built in total, of which 65 were used by the

Electricity Council The Electricity Council was a governmental body set up in 1958 to oversee the electricity supply industry in England and Wales. The council was established on 1 January 1958 to assume the coordinating and policy-making functions of the Central El ...

and

electricity board Public electricity suppliers (PES) were the fourteen electricity companies created in Great Britain when the electricity market in the United Kingdom was privatised following the Electricity Act 1989. The Utilities Act 2000 subsequently split the ...

s in the south of England. Powered by an electric motor and lead-acid batteries, the car has a top speed of around and a range of around . In ''Autocar'''s test in 1975 they found it had a usable range of . It could accelerate from 0 to in 1.6 seconds, in 4.7 seconds and in 15.7 seconds. Brakes are by drums front and back. It has a ladder-type square section tube chassis frame with

aluminium alloy An aluminium alloy ( UK/IUPAC) or aluminum alloy ( NA; see spelling differences) is an alloy in which aluminium (Al) is the predominant metal. The typical alloying elements are copper, magnesium, manganese, silicon, tin, nickel and zinc. There ...

body panels stretched over steel frames. It uses

suspension Suspension or suspended may refer to: Science and engineering * Car suspension * Cell suspension or suspension culture, in biology * Guarded suspension, a software design pattern in concurrent programming suspending a method call and the calling ...

parts from the

Hillman Imp The Hillman Imp is a small economy car that was made by the Rootes Group and its successor Chrysler Europe from 1963 until 1976. Revealed on 3 May 1963, after much advance publicity, it was the first British mass-produced car with the engine b ...

, doors were adapted from the

Mini The Mini is a very small two-door, four-seat car, produced for four decades over a single generation, with many names and variants, by the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and its successors British Leyland and the Rover Group, and finally ...

and a rear

axle An axle or axletree is a central shaft for a rotation, rotating wheel and axle, wheel or gear. On wheeled vehicles, the axle may be fixed to the wheels, rotating with them, or fixed to the vehicle, with the wheels rotating around the axle. In ...

derived from

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three-wheelers.

Neorion

The company had been incorporated into the Greek

Neorion Neorion is one of the oldest Greece, Greek heavy industries, located in Ermoupolis, on the Greek island of Syros. Today, it is one of the few remaining major industrial corporations in what used to be the industrial and commercial center of Gree ...

company, also owned by Goulandris, and production was transferred to

, the company having transformed into a new Greek company, Enfield-Neorion, headquartered in

Piraeus Piraeus ( ; ; , Ancient: , Katharevousa: ) is a port city within the Athens urban area ("Greater Athens"), in the Attica region of Greece. It is located southwest of Athens city centre along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf in the Ath ...

. There have been many arguments regarding the reason why Goulandris decided to produce the car in Greece, including conspiracy theories. Thanos Lebesis, then General Manager of Enfield-Neorion, argues that Goulandris had thought that "the company was owned by Greeks, the car was designed by Greeks, so it should also be produced by Greeks". However, it could not be legally sold in Greece due to tax categorization issues connected with electric power, so production was exported to the United Kingdom. Enfield-Neorion developments included a "

Jeep Jeep is an American automobile brand, now owned by multi-national corporation Stellantis. Jeep has been part of Chrysler since 1987, when Chrysler acquired the Jeep brand, along with other assets, from its previous owner, American Motors Co ...

" version aiming at the rent-a-car market in the Greek islands, but none could be sold locally.

"Flux Capacitor"

A highly customised Enfield 8000 named "Jonny's Flux Capacitor" was converted by Jonny Smith into a street-legal electric

drag racer Drag racing is a type of motor racing in which automobiles or motorcycles compete, usually two at a time, to be first to cross a set finish line. The race follows a short, straight course from a standing start over a measured distance, most c ...

. which for a time claimed to be the world's fastest street legal electric vehicle.

References

External links

{{Commons category-inline, Enfield 8000
Enfield 8000 is the first small electric car widely produced worldwide.Video of an Enfield 8000 ECC with modern electronics
* A Tale of Two Isles (2014) Documentary https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3838966/ Electric cars Syros Cyclades Cars introduced in 1973

Neorion

"Flux Capacitor"

See also

References

External links