It’s grey. By which I mean both the car and the weather. While there are the vestigial remains of some Shelby stripes on the boot and the nose, the Cobra that rests on axle stands is currently a dull, plain grey, with the monotony broken only by some patches of rubbed-down filler. Those patches are covering up what used to be holes for a fuel filler and exhaust exits.
This Cobra, based on a Dax-bodied replica, doesn’t need those anymore. The 4.0-litre Rover V8 that once powered it rests on the floor of AVA Electrifi’s workshop in the picturesque Wicklow mountains, gently dripping oil into a pan.
AVA Electrifi is the brainchild of Norman Crowley, a Cork-born entrepreneur who has made his fortune developing low-carbon monitoring and logistics systems for big companies. Taking that low-carbon dream to its limits, Crowley’s home-grown car company is not only converting existing classic cars to electric power, but also has dreams of creating his own retro-styled, 2,000hp electric ‘hyperclassic’ model.
“Back in 2019 when we started this, if you said at a dinner party that you wanted to put electric motors into classic cars, no-one wanted to talk to you.” Crowley, dressed in shorts and an AVA-branded shirt, is remarkably open and chatty, certainly compared to normally reticent and PR-monitored car company chiefs. “We’d done some car conversions before, such as putting a Tesla motor and batteries into a Ferrari 308 that had blown its engine, but AVA is about the next level up — a vehicle that’s rebuilt from the ground up, with every annoying thing that was in it got completely right.”
Sadly, that rightness doesn’t yet extend to the electric Cobra. Sitting tantalisingly in the pitlane at Mondello Park, just outside Dublin, under the skin there’s a circa-500bhp electric motor driving the rear diff, and enough battery capacity under that sensuous nose to run for around 20-minutes at race track speeds. It’s not running though. Its battery got held up at customs for almost two weeks and so it’s now being swarmed over by the AVA team trying to get it ready to ship to Salon Privé, and they’re running out of time. At Salon Privé it will be auctioned, and some of the proceeds donated to climate change charities.
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