“No, I don’t like the Prius. I went with the Briggs & Stratton Hyrbid.” What?
Photo credit: aldenjewell
By Zack Klapman
This is the Briggs & Stratton hyrbid concept car. Many of us youngsters think the hybrid started with the Prius, but there were actually several concepts in the late 70s/early 80s, as a possible solution to the gas/smog crisis. Chrysler and GE got together and $9 million dollars later, debuted the 1980 ETV1 concept. It had an 80HP I/C engine and a 40HP electric motor. The batteries re-charged using the motor, regenerative braking, or by being plugged into a wall outlet. After reading about it, I kind of laugh now when a new hybrid hits the market touting it’s new, plug-in capability.
The other hybrid concept came from Briggs & Stratton. What I know about Briggs & Stratton is that two 12 year-olds can easily rip one apart, rebuild it, and mount it on a rusty mini-bike frame of questionable integrity. Then you can put a straight pipe on it and annoy the neighbors. B&S also made motors for chainsaws, and washing machines, and I guess decided those power-plants would be perfect in a hatch back.
That’s the car you see above, and what a strange thing it is. The chassis is from a 6-wheel delivery van from Canada, made by Marathon Electric Vehicles. Most of the drive-train and inputs were from a Ford Pinto. With the 3rd axle mounted so far aft, this car had a removable battery pack (sound familiar?), so you could swap in a charged battery just by lifting the tailgate. And by using lightweight fiberglass and Lucite, it only weighed an impressive 3,200lbs.
Today, a weight near 3,000 lbs brings up words like “Lotus” or “sporty”, but this car couldn’t have been farther from that. Horsepower? 26…combined. 18HP from the air-cooled motor up front, with 8 more sprinkled like a parsley garnish from the electric engine in the back. Sporty? How’s 0-40mph in 21.9 seconds. To forty. In gas-only mode it took “well over a minute.”
“Welcome to heaven, my son. Tell me, how did you perish?”
“In a 6-wheeled Pinto.”
“Really? That sounds quite bitchin”
“No, Mr. Peter, it wasn’t. Trust me.”
Obviously it wasn’t meant to be fast, but sip gas and emit clean-ish exhaust, and it did: 25-52MPG in gas mode, up to 85MPG in hybrid mode. I would hope so. If you can’t get good MPG with 26HP, 3,200lbs, and 6 tires displacing weight, you’d probably have a tough time putting on velcro shoes.
Briggs & Stratton never really intended to sell this car. It was an experiment to show off their new gas engine, and showcase their electric technology. But it does make you laugh to look back 32 years and see a concept displaying 3 attributes (plug-in, removable battery, hybrid system) that today seem as futuristic and technologically advanced as light sabres. Turns out the guys that make weed-whackers figured it out a while ago. It was really simple, and really slow.
Source: flickr
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2012-10-30 10:42:24
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