My last posts here at Curbside Classic developed a theme of alternative-powered vehicles. Thus far we’ve progressed through a diesel swap straight to a homemade solar array; the next step is naturally an even more spectacularly unlikely powertrain to DIY: a gasoline-electric serial hybrid!
This stunning example of alternative engineering comes to us from the simply superb Miracle of America Museum in Polson, Montana. Simply study the background of the lead image if you would like to do a spit take. The 1-of-348 US spec Austin A90 Atlantic on the semi trailer in the background is just the tip of the iceberg for staggeringly rare motorized machinery. It manages to be one of the single most consistently surprising places I’ve ever been despite being, ostensibly, a collection of interesting junk in a field and some ramshackle sheds. This visit report from a prior CCer barely scratches the surface.
With that preamble out of the way, what are we looking at here? At first glance, it’s merely another 1965-1967 pre-facelift Renault 10 rotting in an overgrown corner. This Beetle-fighting import was briefly a big seller before the shaky reputation of Renault in the US caught up to it. Particularly in rust-prone environments, these cars disappeared faster than Daewoos did in the 2000s. Even finding one abandoned in a field is becoming challenging nowadays. Despite the disposable nature of the R10 in America, someone thought to bestow upon this specific car a very special gift.
There are very few outward signs of the madness that lurks within this vehicle. The only truly obvious change to the car since it left the factory are the three large holes that have been drilled in the front valence. As these cars were famously late to the rear-engined party, they can’t be air intakes, can they?
The next clue lies inside the surprisingly intact dashboard. A slew of aftermarket gauges have been haphazardly installed in assorted holes in the dashboard. What could they possibly be for?
Being curious about those rogue air holes, I opened the reverse hinged hood to investigate. Inside, I was met with a stunning sight. A stationary generator was expertly grafted into the frunk driving a series of belts. The chain of movement appears to terminate into some kind of large electric generator.
I was speechless. Why would someone install an auxiliary engine in an affordable compact’s luggage compartment? The quality of the work on display is genuinely stunning. Everything is held securely in place with well fabricated brackets. Even the wiring isn’t a total rat’s nest.
Moving around back to the car’s original engine location, the reason for the generator becomes more obvious. Nested below some nondescript boxes, a massive electric motor is mated to the original transmission. Zooming in on the motor’s plaque, I run out of pixels just after making out the words “elevator.” Based on some Google image comparisons, I believe this electric motor originally called a portable tow-behind grain conveyer home. The motor is too small for a building’s elevator but just about the right size for a farming implement.
The quality of engineering on display here suggests that this car was converted early in life. Perhaps it was an engineering test mule for a failed serial hybrid conversion startup. Given there is either no or little onboard battery capacity, it’s inconceivable that the setup was chosen purely for environmental reasons. The stationary gasoline generator would have produced quite a racket and likely resulted in less overall range. Perhaps it was a slightly more efficient setup than the original Renault powertrain? The 10 was already one of the most economical cars available but certainly not the lightest or most aerodynamic, making a hypermiling intention less likely. Just what was the motivation behind this conversion?
Naturally, comparisons will be made to the ambitious Henney Kilowatt project. That electric Renault was Dauphine-based, with the venture expiring long before our featured R10 left the assembly line. I suppose we can’t rule out this wacky serial-hybrid being a side project of an executive from that company. Since our car is ultimately powered by gasoline with electricity merely being a middleman, I think it is unlikely there is a connection.
What do we think? Is it an unusually successful side project of a farmer with a broken grain elevator? A big budget engineering exercise of a company looking to diversify? We may never know.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: Renault R10 – When Being A Better Volkswagen Isn’t Good Enough
Vintage Ad: Henney Kilowatt – The First Post-War Production EV
Truly mysterious. I owned an R8, so the contents of the frunk are especially shocking.
Seems to have used old car heater motors for air cooling in both sections. R10s could get 40 mpg without trying, so the typical hybrid mileage wouldn’t have been a dramatic improvement.
Very interesting. Here on CC I’d only run across Paul’s article on the Miracle of America Museum’s bike collection – https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/vintage-bikes-everything-from-zero-to-four-cylinders/ – and missed David’s extensive tour of the rest of the collection (including a first look at this Renault 10). I’d very much like to go to that museum sometime as it seems to be exactly that kind of “everything possible jumbled in together as organized by a questionably sane proprietor” place that I love.
The museum seems to be a kind of “Hold my beer…” Hall of Fame. And so many of the artifacts look a) Like operating them would be a sure-fire way to die and/or b) Things that make little sense except as a project by someone down on the farm with time on their hands. This Renault definitely fits into category b.
I’m torn between thinking that it’s a shame that this invention (and apparently many other exhibits at the museum) has been left to rust away in silence and the thought that this is probably the best outcome for this particular thing. Either way, it’s fascinating, and thanks for writing it up!
Hold my beer is an understatement. Everything from cutaway radial engines to Nazi war flags. There were locomotives and Crosleys. But I especially liked the confusing handmade contraptions whose purpose seems incredibly obscure.
I think one of my favorite artifacts there was a large pistol. . . . with a massive Bayonet! Like, longer than the already large gun! It was probably dangerous to even look at that monstrosity.
Perhaps it is simply an exercise in making something else out of something (sez the guy who likes to do that sort of thing, even on the occasions when it is mostly pointless).
A straight series hybrid (without batteries) makes no sense, as it is inherently less efficient than the original drive train. The losses of the generator and the electric motor combined exceed 20%; the friction losses of the original transmission might be around 3%.
The only way this might have made any sense is if there were batteries. Did you look in the back seat? I suspect that’s where they would have been.
This is essentially a gas-electric drive train, as was used at the very dawn of the automotive age because clutches and transmission were at a very crude state of development. But very quickly that improved and the complexity and inherent inefficiency of the gas-electric drive train made it obsolete.
This is also analogous to a diesel-electric locomotive. These use this system not because its efficient (it’s definitely less so than a mechanical drive), but because it’s simply the best and most reliable way to transmit many thousands of hp to steel wheel on steel rails.
If this really did not have any batteries, its maker was clueless as to the inherent inefficiency of this system, and it would likely have been awkward to drive it’s not easy to control changing power demands, which happen much more often in a car than on a locomotive or ship.
The gas engine looks to be of no more than a 10hp industrial one cylinder, and given the losses, it would make this car very slow indeed.
This looks like the typical home-brew tinkerer type of contraption that was once popular, but if there were really no batteries, its builder was truly clueless. He turned a quite efficient well-engineered car into a next-to-useless contraption. I’m still betting there were batteries in the rear seat area, in which case this would be something that one would find in Mother Earth news or such “Build Your Own EV With On Board Charger!”
The rear was full of boxes, but I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary and at least the seat back was still in the car. I couldn’t locate any batteries, but surely there must be some somewhere? Given how relatively well fabricated the whole thing is, there’s no way the builder didn’t think of that. This setup only makes sense as a sort of range extender EV anyways.
I also can’t fathom how much worse this must have been than the original to drive. The generator would be very loud. That grain elevator motor can’t be very powerful. Could the throttle even be smoothly modulated or did the driver only have like three speeds? This must have been s l o w indeed
All my memories about Renaults involve seeing them dead in the water in side driveways everywhere.
I visited there in 2011 and did a whole series of posts from it:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/vintage-bikes-everything-from-zero-to-four-cylinders/
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/vintage-snow-cats-snowmobiles-and-other-oddities-in-case-the-snow-plow-doesnt-show-up/
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/museumside-classic-the-whatchamacallit-homebuilt-rv/
There’s more…
Another home brew from someone with good fabricating skills but poor over view .
I too imagine it’d be terribly noisy but as a cheap local run around car it might be fun .
-Nate
(off to look at the Motocycles)
Were there batteries in those cases in the motor compartment? there must be at least one somewhere in it, even Renault supplied a battery.
Best comment of the day 🙂
And yes, I wondered the same thing.
If those are batteries, it’s probably only around 6 car batteries in total. Even golf carts have more capacity than that.
Someone rented a hangar space from us for a similar impossible project, but for a small airplane. Diesel stationary motor, generator, electric motor driving two propellers by toothed belts and large capacitors for electrical storage. No way did this pencil out. Thankfully, abandoned before someone killed themself trying to fly it off our short runway.
Good lord. The Miracle of America museum needs to acquire that as it fulfills categories a AND b (per my first comment, above).
Not my Father’s Renault by a whole bunch.
He bought a new ’68 R10 at Almartin Motors in South Burlington.
Wonder about the bumper bar in the front and the holes in the front fascia…guess they couldn’t fit everything in the rear (original engine compartment) which probably had stock air intake for the rear radiator. They lost luggage space as well as probably the spare tire compartment under the front trunk with this…which might not be too much of a loss if used in urban area (where I’d guess you might not need luggage and you might be near your auto club should you get a flat). Not related, but I got my first flat tire in several years this week, glad my car had a spare, didn’t have to wait for the auto club.
Dad bought it after his ’59 Beetle was totalled parked in front of our house. He was taking lots of business trips to Corbeil-Essonnes at that time, became a bit of a Francophile…which might also have happened 15 years prior when he was stationed in Germany for the US Army…he was assigned early 50s Beetles (guess the Jeeps were in Korea at the time).
Frankly a hybrid (had it existed back then) would have been a good idea, other than weight distribution (probably all that stuff in the front would take some traction away from the rear wheels and he needed good traction for the long winters. He didn’t use the R10 for much more than commuting, I think it only had 22k miles on it when he traded it in in 1974. One of my memories is of losing the clutch coming back from a Washington Senators baseball game (we’d moved to Northern Virginia, Dad was still moving a lot for his job back then). He wasn’t a baseball fan at all, unlike the rest of his family, I think it’s the only baseball game I’ve ever attended….I think it had more to do with timing that he wanted to do a father-son thing but happened during baseball season…he was way more into American football and attended (more than just the one) Redskin’s games.