Tesla powered Mini Supercar beater

There we go. [Applause] Who would be crazy enough to put 300 horsepower in a little thing like this? Well, that would be me. I’m Richard from Electric Classic Cars, and in this week’s episode sponsored by Mouser Electronics, it’s all about this beautiful 1966 Tesla powered Mini. Right, all you mini experts, get ready in the comments because I’m about to make loads of mistakes. So, please correct me in the comments. And Tim, you’re the resident mini expert today. So, feel free to correct. Well, I was I used to be a mini expert, but I seem to have forgotten most of it. So, I think I’ve already made one mistake. I said 1966 Mini. What is it? 67. 67 Mini. So anyway, um so this is owned by uh a guy called Simon and he has had this in his family for it’s fair to say generations. It’s it was his father’s car. It’s now his car and he wants to pass it on to his daughters and it’s gone through a beautiful restoration. As you can see, it’s faultless as far as the restoration is concerned. But this is where I’m going to get it wrong. Simon, I know you’re going to watch. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I know this is an early Mini because it’s got the external hinges. I think it’s a M1 Mini, but I’m a little bit confused. It may be a MK 2. And I do remember somebody saying you can tell the MK2 because this window is a little bit bigger than a M1. Well, it’s got the slidy window, so it’s certainly not the later one. Oh, no. Definitely not the Mark 3, but I always get confused between Mark Ones and Mark Two. So, I’m going to go with Mark One Mini. What are you going to go with? I’ll go with Mark 2 just to Right. Okay. Just to mix it up. Who’s right? I know we should have done our research, but look, we’re in the middle of Wales. There’s no signal up here. We couldn’t get Google, so guilty as charge. But I’m going to say Mark 1 Mini 1967. And uh yeah, as apart from the restoration, he’s also done some upgrades. So, let’s talk about those before we get into the electrification side of things. Right, we’re going to do a walk around of the upgrades. So Tim, stay with me. First thing to cover off is wheels. They are mini lights. The best wheels for minis. They are indeed. You can only go with one mini one one wheel on a mini lights. And they are proper original mini lights. But be hiding behind that is disc upgrade from CAD K A D. So they’re probably one of the ultimate upgrades uh you can go with on a Mini is to go with disc brakes. But not only are they on the front, they’re also on the back. So you got CAD disc brakes on the back as well as upgraded suspension from CAD as well. And also an anti-roll bar on the rear as well. So handling wise, this is probably about as good as you can get an original suspension suspension mini um to go around corners. Um as well as that, we got the tires. We’ve got some advans on here. So, these are Yokoh Yokohama Advans. The stickiest uh tires we can get on there. But you’ll notice the size of the wheels. They are tiny. They are the original, you know, 10-in wheels. So, tiny little wheels, and I think they really suit the look of the car. Another upgrade. So, you got the uh what are these called? Bullet bullet mirrors. Bullet mirrors. Yeah. But there’s a name Tolbert. Tolbert minis uh mirrors, I think they’re called. Probably from the Tolbert Sunbeam or something. Um, around here we’ve got fuel filler, but obviously different kind of fuel now. And then around the back, it’s pretty much stock. But what you can notice through the window is the roll cage. So, bolt-in roll cage from Safety Devices. So, just a full-on Well, yeah, I’d say it’s a full-on cage, but you still got the back seat in here as well. So, it’s actually quite a practical roll cage. So, and that’s that’s a good thing to have if you’re in a Mini. Well, it stiffens the car up, but also, as you’ll find out later, this is quick. Really quick, right now, let’s talk about why it’s so quick. And it’s this badge here, which gives the game away. On an Austin Cooper S, that would be an S, but that’s a lightning strike. So, what’s going on underneath here? Well, let’s have a look. So, uh, I got this little thing inside. So, this is our standard mini kit, which has gone into a number of minis now all around the world from New Zealand and Australia to America. There’s a company out there called Super Coopers, Gildred Racing. They uh, install our kits over there in America. But this was pretty much the first kit we installed, certainly in the UK. And underneath here, um, well, you can’t really see it, but underneath there, I I’ll tell you what, I’ll get I’ll put some shots on the screen. I’ll dig them out. There is a Tesla front small drive unit underneath there. And then on top of that, we’ve got a little bit of battery pack. Um, there’s a charger down there. We’ve got the uh header tank here and a radiator down there, which cools everything down. So, that’s pretty much it in the front. Um, that is not all of the battery pack though. That’s one of the reasons why I love this car is because number one, it’s crazy amounts of power, which is what I love. But also, we’ve managed to put the battery pack into this car with hardly any negative aspect if you like as far as luggage space and interior space is concerned. So, where have I hidden the rest of the battery? Right now, I’m in the back of the Mini. Obviously, it’s a Mini. It’s not much room. That’s why Tim’s outside and I’m inside. But battery pack wise underneath the back seat. We’ve got two more modules or that’s two of uh 14 in total that are underneath the back seat and the rest is in the boot. And hiding in here is the rest of the battery pack. But just a quick note, another lightning strike there just to replace the S of the Kooper S. And also, you’ll probably notice this number plate’s a little bit tattered and bashed. That’s because it’s the original number plate off the car back in the day. So, that is why that’s on there. So, what we got in here? It is the rest of the battery pack. Now, you might say, “Oh, this compromised the actual space inside here.” Well, yeah, it does come up a little bit higher than the original uh boot space, but on the Mini Cooper S, you had a fuel tank which was kind of here and another one over this side that was there. So, Simon, the owner of this, has actually calculated volumetrically. This is a bigger boot than the original Mini Cooper S. Now, I do love the design of the Mini and not just because the aesthetics. I do love the look of the car, don’t get me wrong, but it’s from the engineering aspect of the design. I love things like this, right? So, it’s you got a small boot in it. It’s a mini at the end of the day. You’re not going to fit huge amount of space in there. But if you open this up, you can probably strap a load of luggage in a bigger space. But what about the number plate? Well, you just pop down the number plate. Still got the light there, and it’s still road legal. So, touches like that I love. It’s just brilliant. And the engineering design doesn’t stop uh when you get inside either cuz it’s just so roomy. I mean, you’re 6′ what, two? Yeah. And you know, your windscreen is like far away and you know, when you close the door, you’re not like, “Oh my god, this is a small car.” Cuz your your doors just um like slope outwards like that. I mean, there’s not much side protection in the crash to be fair. But, you know, it’s you’re not short of space considering this car is called a Mini. And as far as the interior is concerned, I mean, there’s not much change in here, if you like, uh, from the original, uh, apart from obviously the bolt-in roll cage. Everything looks pretty much stock and OEM. We’ve got, uh, a Smith’s gauge uh, here in the middle, another two smaller gauges outside, but obviously they’re telling different information than normally. We’ve got the total pack voltage. We’ve got the temperature of the motor and the fuel gauge now shows the battery state of charge if you like. So, you know, the whole of the electric conversion that we’ve done is pretty much OEM. And one of the reasons how we’ve been able to achieve OEM looking conversions is because of some of the components we use from MA electronics. So, back to the lab to tell you a little bit more about that. Now, mouser.com is our one-stop shop for a lot of our EV conversion components that we need, especially if you’re going to have an OEM looking conversion. Connectors are key. Now, we use three main flavors of connector that we get from mouser.com. One is Deutsch. Now, Deutsch is from TE Connectivity, and these are fantastic if you got a lot of wires because you can see the number of pins on some of these connectors. And also, they’re fantastic for bulkhead connectors. So if you need to go through a bulkhead for instance and they also have some great wire management uh options as well to come off the back of them. So that’s Deutsch connectors. Uh we also on the low voltage side of things use a Molex a lot as well. So Molex have got a great range of just inline connectors for instance. So this is a two pin connector here and there’s a little bit here where you can mount that onto something and then this would just come in and connect up. Again usual waterproofing um in this connector and that connector as well. So they also have some bulkhead connectors as well. So that’s Molex and Deutsch on the low voltage side of things. But on high voltage, don’t forget orange is high voltage. We use Amphenol. Now, Amphanol have great products for big cables like this. This would be probably one that goes off to either a motor or to the CCS socket, for instance, but also for smaller gauge wires. For instance, this is a four pin one. This would probably do either the heater and um the charger inputs and outputs. And there’s also two pin version of that there. So, high voltage connectors, we use Amphenol. low voltage. It’s either Molex or Deutsch connectors from TE Connectivity. And all of these products are available from mouser.com. We’ll put a link in the description. And on that note, it’s back to the mini episode. All right, Jim, time for your favorite time of the day test drive. Ready? I’m ready. Been a long time since I’ve been in a Mini. I just thought something I haven’t mentioned this, the uh gear stick. People are probably wondering, why has it got a gear stick in it? Well, the customer uh Simon, he’s quite a clever chap as far as engineering design is concerned himself. And he designed his own gear shifter. So, this is reverse and forward. And you’ve got a very satisfying clunk as it all goes in as well. So, on that note, Tim, try to see see if you can fit in, mate. All 6’2 of you. Loads of room. Oh, you know, because you’ve been in a Mini before, but yeah, time to get on the road. You ready? I’m ready. You don’t regret it. Hey, you don’t regret it. That’s cuz I’m feeling sick. Well, we got over the first like hurdle, which is you fitting it. This takes me back to uh that first road rally we did. Oh, really? When I was sick as a pig. Remember that? That’s not a good thing. You you started taking motion sickness tablets after that, didn’t you? I did. Right. Well, luckily I know this road, so you don’t need to look at the pace notes, mate. Right. So, here we go. I went down looking for a full house. It’s been many years since I’ve been in a Mini. Is it the last Mini you went in? God. Well, we were into Minis, weren’t we? Back in the When you were into Beatles. I was in the Minis. Yeah. About the only cars you could afford back then. Minis and Beatles. Yeah. They weren’t worth a lot. I had a Mini Kooper S years ago. Did you? Yeah. Oh, I didn’t know that. Yeah, I had it for about 3 weeks, a month, maybe. Did he crash it? No. Bought it for 300 quid. Sold it for 300 quid. Red one with a white roof. Better didn’t go around and tear things like this or even go up hills like this. It wasn’t road legal. Well, it wasn’t road legal. It was one to sort of do up. So, I never really drove it anyway. Fix her up. Yeah. Or was it just a 1960s7s one as well? A 60s one. A proper 60 1275. Nice. It wasn’t nice. That’s why I didn’t keep it long. Well, if you got it on the road, mate, it wouldn’t have gone like this. This is like a go-kart. No, it’s good fun. You got to be honest with this car, though. This is This is as close to my Beetle, my silver Beetle with a 600 horsepower Tesla motor as any other car we’ve built. So, what I mean by that is if you floor it, you are dicing with death. But if you just are respectful of the power and just introduce it at the right moment, you can have a lot of fun. I’m assuming this handles a bit better than your Beetle, does it? Um, yes and no. I wouldn’t I would prefer to drive my Beetle um at higher speeds. I think this would be a little bit scary at higher speeds, but at lower speeds, I mean, like this corner, I mean, you can just throw it round. Yeah. Well, I think that’s why I’m feeling a bit sick because the little bit of driving we’ve done to get here, all I can feel is the fact that you’re going around slow corners like a go-kart. That’s exactly what it’s like. Yeah. But all the upgrades we’ve done on it, like the suspension, the brakes, uh, all of that really helps to be able to put this power down to the ground. Yeah. Nothing handled like a Mini back in the day. Yeah. But this got disc brakes all around, don’t forget. So if I want to stop, we are stopping. If we want to go around, it’s got anti-roll bars on it. Going around the corners. I mean, it’s not got huge amount of suspension travel. No, Minis never did. No, I mean that’s why we’re bumping around all over the place, but I certainly know I’ve got good brakes and the regen of the motor helps in that respect as well. But there’s no power steering on it. It’s very It’s a very manual car to drive, let’s say. But even when it starts to squirrel around in the corner, you still got full confidence. You got full control over it. I mean, well, you might feel you got full confidence and full control over it. I’m not so sure. In the passenger seat, we got a roll cage. What are you worried about? So, back in the day when I was in the minis, the sort of quickest Mini you could get was a Mini Kooper S. And they made them in different engine size. 1275. Uh was it a 10? Forget now. 10 something. I remember the 1275. Yeah. They made the dual tanks in the back. Yeah. The smaller engine ones were the better ones apparently. Anyway, they would have struggled to give you anything more than about 100 horsepower I think from those uh A series engines. What sort of power and performance we got out of this then? Obviously this has the Tesla small drive unit. just love go around corners in this 300 horsepower Tesla small drive unit. But performance-wise, it’s all about the traction, just like my Beetle. But in my Beetle, I’ve got tires that wide. You know, in this, we’ve got little 10-in wheels. Yeah. And uh skateboard tires. So, traction wise, it really limits your 0 to 60. But it’s around about 4 seconds, I reckon. But that’s always been the problem with putting lots of power into a Mini. You’re still struggling with those little wheels, those little tires, and they just start to spin, don’t they? Yeah. Well, the the later 1990s Minis had, you know, they had wider flares. They had bigger diameter wheels. This little 1960s Mini we’ve kept or the the customer really wanted to keep that original looking ‘ 60s look. So, we’ve got And you can’t beat Mini lights on a on a Mini. They’re the only wheels to have, aren’t they? Oh, yeah. But this has got sticky tires on. This is probably the most stickiest uh road legal tires you can probably have on a Mini and we’re getting all the performance out of those on this cold day. You know, I’m I’m forever impressed as well with the design of the Mini. You think when this first came out, um you Well, it was designed you could get four family of four in it. You could get all your luggage in it. You could get on holidays in the side bins. So, we had a Mini back in the day, diarrhea color brown, and we went to the South of France camping in it with me, my sister, and Barry, Charlie in the back. Three of us in the back. It was a uh canvas tent in the boot. And the boot comes down like that, but the um number plate flips back up so you can like drive it with the boot open. and a um uh a roof rack with loads of other stuff in. It was fully loaded all the way down to South France. But isn’t that amazing from we I mean we looked at this now as a really really small car, but it was designed to be able to do that with all those people in it and but as well as that it was a rally winning weapon. You know, it was one of the best handling cars. Exactly. Yeah. So amazing bit of engineering, isn’t it? wheel. So, you say this has got 300 horsepower. Yeah. Can you dial it down a bit? Oh, yeah. This is dialed down now. I’m not in race mode. This is in probably I don’t know 120 horsepower mode. Okay. So, normal day-to-day driving, you’d set it to aboutund and like you say, there’s going to be plenty. Yeah. You would would you really want to turn it up to 300 horsepower? Only on a track. Only on a track. And the customer said that as well. He’s well into his minis. And you can only really use all that power on the track cuz you’ve got to have enough room to be able to have a little bit of torque steer. And you know, it’s it’s a hell of a thing. It’s a nice problem to have, isn’t it? Too much power. So, what’s the range on this thing? Well, it’s got a 33 kWh battery pack. Um, and I think the range is around about 150. No, it’s about 180 miles. 180 miles. Actually, we’ll put on the screen because the guys did the range test this week and I haven’t spoken to them since they’ve done it, but it was I remember it being a lot more than I was expecting. That’s pretty good. I suppose it’s a little car, isn’t it? Yeah. I mean, it’s you got tiny wheels, you’ve got a small frontal area. Um, it doesn’t weigh much. I mean, it’s still way below a ton. Uh, on the scales, it was weighing around about the same as a um late ’90s Mini cuz they made them, I think, until about 2000. Yeah, they did. Yeah. And [Music] So, we were talking earlier about these little wheels and it, you know, they’re going to struggle, aren’t they, to get the power uh to the road. Yeah, that’s always a struggle with these uh whenever we do high power uh conversions, the grip and the traction is the limiting factor. And that’s that’s been the problem. Well, not problem. That’s been a thing with your Beetle and your race car Beetle as well. I mean, we’ve mitigated it a little bit um on my Beetle by getting wide, huge, massive sticky tires on this cuz we wanted that classic look or the customer wanted that classic look. We kept the 10-in wide mini lights or 10in uh diameter mini lights, sticky uh Yoko Advan tires. But the biggest um thing that helps with the grip is the uh quake. Let me just look there. Right. That is, you know, ensures that the wherever the grip is, it’ll it’ll get it to the ground, if you know what I mean. But it doesn’t take much to get over, you know, the mechanical grip of the tires. You’re moving with that. You really need that then when you got 300 horsepower. Oh yeah. So talking of 300 horsepower. We’ve been driving around today with about 100 120. Yeah. Can we try the 300 horsepower then? You’re feeling brave, aren’t you? Well, be be you know it’ be a bit of a waste, wouldn’t it? Having a switch there that does 300 horsepower and then not not testing it out. I’m going to get on a straight bit of road first before uh I flick that crazy switch, mate. Right, let’s do it. Uh, yeah. I hope you’ve had your brave pills. Are you wearing your brown pants? I am. Yeah. Here we go. Whoa. Bloody hell. That’s enough of that for a mini. Wow. I was holding on then. Wow. Yeah, that was insane. And that was a bit sort of squirly when it got off the line, but after a while it started to settle down. Can you feel Can you could feel the limited slip diff? working it ass off then. But once it settled down, it really went, didn’t it? And if we’d have been on a track or something where we’d have got a bit more space. Wow. Hang on. Can I turn it off now, please? Jeez, that’s insane. That is phenomenal. I can see why we said track only mode for that. Back to uh more sensible 120 horsepower mode. Well, that was a bit of fun, wasn’t it? That was a cracking trip out. Yeah, I enjoyed that. Oh, I’m still shaking from the uh adrenaline from putting it in sport mode now. I haven’t stopped smiling yet. I This is a proper wolf in sheep’s clothing because it looks like a cute little bunny rabbit Mini. You’ll see it in your rear view mirror and go, “Look at that lovely Mini.” And all of a sudden, whoosh as it overtakes you. I mean, brilliant car. Absolutely love it. This is a bit of me. crazy amounts of power in what I call a sleeper. Just looks original. But we have learned one important lesson today, haven’t we? We certainly did. What is it? And that is only use um sport mode on the track. Yep. Simon, I know you’re going to be watching owner of this car. One of But one important note, do not flick that switch on the road, please. It is insane. But I mean, the other thing as well, look at the size of this car. I mean this I’m standing on the car parks are like you know bay line here and we’ve got a complete like I’d say a meter all the way around the car. Even at the back it’s probably more than a meter but you can still fit comfortably four people in that car. It’s just what a car. I absolutely love this thing. But on that note, I’m gonna go and have a sit down and just probably a lie down and just try to drain the adrenaline out of me. But on that note, I think it’s just remains for me to thank Mouser. Go to mouser.com for all your electronic components needs. And hope you enjoyed this episode and we’ll see you on the next one. [Music]

We take a walk around a 300hp Tesla powered classic Mini and take it for a spin around the Welsh hills. This car is one of the most fun cars we’ve ever driven and can’t fail to put a smile on your face every time you drive it. But under that cute as a button looks lies the heart of a beast. This truly is a wolf in sheeps clothing, even in road mode this will keep up with most modern sports cars but flick it into track mode and hold on to your hats for a wild ride.

This car is converted to electric using our bolt-in Mini conversion kit, available to conversion shops around the world. It includes a Tesla front drive unit and over 30kWh of battery spread throughout the car for optimum weight distribution. Click on the episode below for more info on our electric Mini conversion kit.