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Nissan Newbird review: bold electric Bluebird driven

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Nissan Newbird review: bold electric Bluebird driven | Top Gear

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EV restomods are all the rage. We drive a humdrum – yet special – Eighties repmobile getting in on the act

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Nissan Newbird review: bold electric Bluebird driven

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Wow. How old is that? Car styling has come on a long way since the Eighties, huh? This is a Nissan Bluebird of 1988 vintage, and readers of a certain age might have never witnessed a car so bluff-edged. One suspects the designers would have made the wheels square if physics allowed.

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EV restomods are all the rage. We drive a humdrum – yet special – Eighties repmobile getting in on the act

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Nissan Newbird review: bold electric Bluebird driven

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Nissan Newbird review: bold electric Bluebird driven

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EV restomods are all the rage. We drive a humdrum – yet special – Eighties repmobile getting in on the act

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EV restomods are all the rage. We drive a humdrum – yet special – Eighties repmobile getting in on the act

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Wow. How old is that?Car styling has come on a long way since the Eighties

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huh? This is a Nissan Bluebird of 1988 vintage

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and readers of a certain age might have never witnessed a car so bluff-edged. One suspects the designers would have made the wheels square if physics allowed.So why the jazzy paint job?You’re looking at a concept that’s very flavour of the month: an electric restomod. Because this isn’t a Nissan Bluebird

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it’s a Nissan Newbird. It celebrates the 35th anniversary of the company’s colossally successful UK plant – on the banks of the River Wear in Sunderland – by uniting the first model manufactured there with the latest. This is a ‘T12’ generation Bluebird with its nat-asp 1.8-litre petrol engine scalloped out and replaced with a bunch of battery modules and a motor from a Leaf.I guess it’s less offensive than an electric 911…Indeed

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taking a proudly humdrum car and giving it a jazzier lease of life – as its brightly hued decals allude to – seems a pretty sane idea to us. Nissan hasn’t ground its hectic factory to a halt

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though; once the company had sourced one of the nicer Bluebirds languishing in the classifieds

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it was sent a few miles down the road to Kinghorn Electric Vehicles in Durham. Who’re they?A company that’s now become something of a specialist in gutting the hearts from unloved Leafs (Leaves?) and transplanting them into all manner of classics. Their workload is stacked right into the middle of 2022 – electrifying retro icons is a booming business right now

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whatever the internet commenting fraternity has to say about the matter.So talk specs to me.The motor and inverter come from a crash-damaged first-gen Leaf

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while the battery pack is brand new from the Nissan factory (and thus a second-gen Leaf). Its 24 modules are split; 16 live in the boot

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pretty much eradicating all luggage space

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while eight live under the bonnet. Kinghorn could have slotted them all under the Newbird’s floor

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but opted not to slice up a pristine Bluebird. But if it was your conversion

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they’d happily whip the angle grinder out to give you some proper practicality.Performance numbers are interesting. On paper they’re not impressive; 107bhp and 210lb ft peaks translate into a 15-second 0-60mph time and 130-mile range figure on a sunny day (dropping below 100 when you’re blasting the heating). But it’s all in the tuning. Kinghorn has deliberately mapped in modest acceleration so as not to overwhelm three-decade-old components; plugging in a laptop could double power to 200bhp and more than half the 0-60 time. But it wouldn’t seem right…How does it seem

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then?It’s fantastic. If ever a car suited the smooth

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unruffled progress a calmly tuned electric powertrain lends

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it’s an Eighties repmobile like this. Where EVs tend to feel at home in urban confines – where their rapid zip to 30mph makes them keen little commuters – the Newbird flips that on its head. Acceleration from zero is precisely as lethargic as Kinghorn’s claims suggest. But pegged at thirty in towns and villages

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the Newbird feels raring to go.Weighing just 35 kilos more than its petrol base car – and therefore a welterweight 1

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nearly half a tonne less than a Leaf – it’s got some actual agility to its responses. And with your foot pinned to the floor as you pass national speed limit signs

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its pace is much sprightlier. The Newbird really settles at 60 to 70mph; this is when your foot is perched at its most natural position on the throttle and all the finely aged components around you really seem to breathe a sigh of relief. It was a repmobile then and it’d make a fine repmobile now.Does it have any ‘handling’?Let’s say it’s got ‘enough’. The steering wheel feels absurdly large these days

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but the power-assistance it’s hooked up to is really pleasing in its weight while the skinny kerb weight ensures the Newbird moves about deftly – even with all those battery modules slung out over the front axle.While Kinghorn’s expert mapping means there’s no wheelspin to be found – even in the wet – you’ll reach the limits of the front-end’s dynamism if you try dialling up too much zero-rev torque in the middle of a corner. Better to gently scythe through the turn and build your pace back up once the wheel’s approaching straight. This is a car that invites smooth progress

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and in turn smooths out the creases of your stress when you oblige. It’s a lovely thing to bimble about in

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scenery gushing in through its large and abundant window panes.The brakes are decent enough – and Kinghorn has kindly tuned in some regen

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to replicate engine braking – while Bilstein damping all round brings the suspension largely up to date.How’s refinement?Well

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a fair bit of wind noise finds its way into the plush interior thanks to those spindly pillars. You’ll also hear the odd creak from the suspension and an occasional tick or rattle from the instrument pod without a groaning 1.8 to cancel them out. But the audible whoosh of electric propulsion sounds especially fantastic in here. The vibe is akin to a rolling Tomorrow’s World ‘cars of the future!’ special.Wait

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you said the interior is ‘plush’…Japanese cars were astoundingly well equipped back in the Eighties and Nineties

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shaming even the likes of BMW and Mercedes with their standard kit. So while there’s no sat nav (and music comes via a Blaupunkt tape deck)

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there’s little else to offend a Millennial aboard the Newbird. All the windows are electric and who needs a reversing camera when there’s this much glass?The attention to detail is startling

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too. George Kinghorn is a master of perfectionism and is already plotting to replace the ‘R N D’ selector with a period Bluebird automatic shifter

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while he spent six weeks getting the battery packs to hook up to the fuel gauge so that remaining charge would be displayed via its needle.Which should go some way to justifying this car’s circa £35

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000 conversion – making it a near-£40k Nissan Bluebird once you factor in the original donor car. Which is

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a lot.Indeed.But the Newbird is its very own thing

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and driving one through the streets of Sunderland – pulling in glances from people who’ve either owned a Bluebird

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built a Bluebird or likely both – makes you feel like an A-lister.Kinghorn has given a humdrum Eighties family car some tangible heart. The Bluebird already contained plenty of that for the hard-working people of the city it celebrates

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but the Newbird lets everyone in on the story. It’s canny.

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Wow. How old is that?

Car styling has come on a long way since the Eighties, huh? This is a Nissan Bluebird of 1988 vintage, and readers of a certain age might have never witnessed a car so bluff-edged. One suspects the designers would have made the wheels square if physics allowed.

So why the jazzy paint job?

You’re looking at a concept that’s very flavour of the month: an electric restomod. Because this isn’t a Nissan Bluebird, it’s a Nissan Newbird. It celebrates the 35th anniversary of the company’s colossally successful UK plant – on the banks of the River Wear in Sunderland – by uniting the first model manufactured there with the latest. This is a ‘T12’ generation Bluebird with its nat-asp 1.8-litre petrol engine scalloped out and replaced with a bunch of battery modules and a motor from a Leaf.

I guess it’s less offensive than an electric 911…

Indeed, taking a proudly humdrum car and giving it a jazzier lease of life – as its brightly hued decals allude to – seems a pretty sane idea to us. Nissan hasn’t ground its hectic factory to a halt, though; once the company had sourced one of the nicer Bluebirds languishing in the classifieds, it was sent a few miles down the road to Kinghorn Electric Vehicles in Durham.

Who’re they?

A company that’s now become something of a specialist in gutting the hearts from unloved Leafs (Leaves?) and transplanting them into all manner of classics. Their workload is stacked right into the middle of 2022 – electrifying retro icons is a booming business right now, whatever the internet commenting fraternity has to say about the matter.

So talk specs to me.

The motor and inverter come from a crash-damaged first-gen Leaf, while the battery pack is brand new from the Nissan factory (and thus a second-gen Leaf). Its 24 modules are split; 16 live in the boot, pretty much eradicating all luggage space, while eight live under the bonnet. Kinghorn could have slotted them all under the Newbird’s floor, like a modern EV, but opted not to slice up a pristine Bluebird. But if it was your conversion, they’d happily whip the angle grinder out to give you some proper practicality.

Performance numbers are interesting. On paper they’re not impressive; 107bhp and 210lb ft peaks translate into a 15-second 0-60mph time and 130-mile range figure on a sunny day (dropping below 100 when you’re blasting the heating). But it’s all in the tuning. Kinghorn has deliberately mapped in modest acceleration so as not to overwhelm three-decade-old components; plugging in a laptop could double power to 200bhp and more than half the 0-60 time. But it wouldn’t seem right…

How does it seem, then?

It’s fantastic. If ever a car suited the smooth, unruffled progress a calmly tuned electric powertrain lends, it’s an Eighties repmobile like this. Where EVs tend to feel at home in urban confines – where their rapid zip to 30mph makes them keen little commuters – the Newbird flips that on its head. Acceleration from zero is precisely as lethargic as Kinghorn’s claims suggest. But pegged at thirty in towns and villages, the Newbird feels raring to go.

Weighing just 35 kilos more than its petrol base car – and therefore a welterweight 1,190kg, nearly half a tonne less than a Leaf – it’s got some actual agility to its responses. And with your foot pinned to the floor as you pass national speed limit signs, its pace is much sprightlier. The Newbird really settles at 60 to 70mph; this is when your foot is perched at its most natural position on the throttle and all the finely aged components around you really seem to breathe a sigh of relief. It was a repmobile then and it’d make a fine repmobile now.

Does it have any ‘handling’?

Let’s say it’s got ‘enough’. The steering wheel feels absurdly large these days, but the power-assistance it’s hooked up to is really pleasing in its weight while the skinny kerb weight ensures the Newbird moves about deftly – even with all those battery modules slung out over the front axle.

While Kinghorn’s expert mapping means there’s no wheelspin to be found – even in the wet – you’ll reach the limits of the front-end’s dynamism if you try dialling up too much zero-rev torque in the middle of a corner. Better to gently scythe through the turn and build your pace back up once the wheel’s approaching straight. This is a car that invites smooth progress, and in turn smooths out the creases of your stress when you oblige. It’s a lovely thing to bimble about in, scenery gushing in through its large and abundant window panes.

The brakes are decent enough – and Kinghorn has kindly tuned in some regen, to replicate engine braking – while Bilstein damping all round brings the suspension largely up to date.

How’s refinement?

Well, a fair bit of wind noise finds its way into the plush interior thanks to those spindly pillars. You’ll also hear the odd creak from the suspension and an occasional tick or rattle from the instrument pod without a groaning 1.8 to cancel them out. But the audible whoosh of electric propulsion sounds especially fantastic in here. The vibe is akin to a rolling Tomorrow’s World ‘cars of the future!’ special.

Wait, you said the interior is ‘plush’…

Japanese cars were astoundingly well equipped back in the Eighties and Nineties, shaming even the likes of BMW and Mercedes with their standard kit. So while there’s no sat nav (and music comes via a Blaupunkt tape deck), there’s little else to offend a Millennial aboard the Newbird. All the windows are electric and who needs a reversing camera when there’s this much glass?

The attention to detail is startling, too. George Kinghorn is a master of perfectionism and is already plotting to replace the ‘R N D’ selector with a period Bluebird automatic shifter, while he spent six weeks getting the battery packs to hook up to the fuel gauge so that remaining charge would be displayed via its needle.

Which should go some way to justifying this car’s circa £35,000 conversion – making it a near-£40k Nissan Bluebird once you factor in the original donor car. Which is, quite clearly, a lot.

Indeed.

But the Newbird is its very own thing, and driving one through the streets of Sunderland – pulling in glances from people who’ve either owned a Bluebird, built a Bluebird or likely both – makes you feel like an A-lister.

Kinghorn has given a humdrum Eighties family car some tangible heart. The Bluebird already contained plenty of that for the hard-working people of the city it celebrates, but the Newbird lets everyone in on the story. It’s canny.

# data.attributes.body.processed
Wow. How old is that?

Car styling has come on a long way since the Eighties, huh? This is a Nissan Bluebird of 1988 vintage, and readers of a certain age might have never witnessed a car so bluff-edged. One suspects the designers would have made the wheels square if physics allowed.

So why the jazzy paint job?

You’re looking at a concept that’s very flavour of the month: an electric restomod. Because this isn’t a Nissan Bluebird, it’s a Nissan Newbird. It celebrates the 35th anniversary of the company’s colossally successful UK plant – on the banks of the River Wear in Sunderland – by uniting the first model manufactured there with the latest. This is a ‘T12’ generation Bluebird with its nat-asp 1.8-litre petrol engine scalloped out and replaced with a bunch of battery modules and a motor from a Leaf.

I guess it’s less offensive than an electric 911…

Indeed, taking a proudly humdrum car and giving it a jazzier lease of life – as its brightly hued decals allude to – seems a pretty sane idea to us. Nissan hasn’t ground its hectic factory to a halt, though; once the company had sourced one of the nicer Bluebirds languishing in the classifieds, it was sent a few miles down the road to Kinghorn Electric Vehicles in Durham.

Who’re they?

A company that’s now become something of a specialist in gutting the hearts from unloved Leafs (Leaves?) and transplanting them into all manner of classics. Their workload is stacked right into the middle of 2022 – electrifying retro icons is a booming business right now, whatever the internet commenting fraternity has to say about the matter.

So talk specs to me.

The motor and inverter come from a crash-damaged first-gen Leaf, while the battery pack is brand new from the Nissan factory (and thus a second-gen Leaf). Its 24 modules are split; 16 live in the boot, pretty much eradicating all luggage space, while eight live under the bonnet. Kinghorn could have slotted them all under the Newbird’s floor, like a modern EV, but opted not to slice up a pristine Bluebird. But if it was your conversion, they’d happily whip the angle grinder out to give you some proper practicality.

Performance numbers are interesting. On paper they’re not impressive; 107bhp and 210lb ft peaks translate into a 15-second 0-60mph time and 130-mile range figure on a sunny day (dropping below 100 when you’re blasting the heating). But it’s all in the tuning. Kinghorn has deliberately mapped in modest acceleration so as not to overwhelm three-decade-old components; plugging in a laptop could double power to 200bhp and more than half the 0-60 time. But it wouldn’t seem right…

How does it seem, then?

It’s fantastic. If ever a car suited the smooth, unruffled progress a calmly tuned electric powertrain lends, it’s an Eighties repmobile like this. Where EVs tend to feel at home in urban confines – where their rapid zip to 30mph makes them keen little commuters – the Newbird flips that on its head. Acceleration from zero is precisely as lethargic as Kinghorn’s claims suggest. But pegged at thirty in towns and villages, the Newbird feels raring to go.

Weighing just 35 kilos more than its petrol base car – and therefore a welterweight 1,190kg, nearly half a tonne less than a Leaf – it’s got some actual agility to its responses. And with your foot pinned to the floor as you pass national speed limit signs, its pace is much sprightlier. The Newbird really settles at 60 to 70mph; this is when your foot is perched at its most natural position on the throttle and all the finely aged components around you really seem to breathe a sigh of relief. It was a repmobile then and it’d make a fine repmobile now.

Does it have any ‘handling’?

Let’s say it’s got ‘enough’. The steering wheel feels absurdly large these days, but the power-assistance it’s hooked up to is really pleasing in its weight while the skinny kerb weight ensures the Newbird moves about deftly – even with all those battery modules slung out over the front axle.

While Kinghorn’s expert mapping means there’s no wheelspin to be found – even in the wet – you’ll reach the limits of the front-end’s dynamism if you try dialling up too much zero-rev torque in the middle of a corner. Better to gently scythe through the turn and build your pace back up once the wheel’s approaching straight. This is a car that invites smooth progress, and in turn smooths out the creases of your stress when you oblige. It’s a lovely thing to bimble about in, scenery gushing in through its large and abundant window panes.

The brakes are decent enough – and Kinghorn has kindly tuned in some regen, to replicate engine braking – while Bilstein damping all round brings the suspension largely up to date.

How’s refinement?

Well, a fair bit of wind noise finds its way into the plush interior thanks to those spindly pillars. You’ll also hear the odd creak from the suspension and an occasional tick or rattle from the instrument pod without a groaning 1.8 to cancel them out. But the audible whoosh of electric propulsion sounds especially fantastic in here. The vibe is akin to a rolling Tomorrow’s World ‘cars of the future!’ special.

Wait, you said the interior is ‘plush’…

Japanese cars were astoundingly well equipped back in the Eighties and Nineties, shaming even the likes of BMW and Mercedes with their standard kit. So while there’s no sat nav (and music comes via a Blaupunkt tape deck), there’s little else to offend a Millennial aboard the Newbird. All the windows are electric and who needs a reversing camera when there’s this much glass?

The attention to detail is startling, too. George Kinghorn is a master of perfectionism and is already plotting to replace the ‘R N D’ selector with a period Bluebird automatic shifter, while he spent six weeks getting the battery packs to hook up to the fuel gauge so that remaining charge would be displayed via its needle.

Which should go some way to justifying this car’s circa £35,000 conversion – making it a near-£40k Nissan Bluebird once you factor in the original donor car. Which is, quite clearly, a lot.

Indeed.

But the Newbird is its very own thing, and driving one through the streets of Sunderland – pulling in glances from people who’ve either owned a Bluebird, built a Bluebird or likely both – makes you feel like an A-lister.

Kinghorn has given a humdrum Eighties family car some tangible heart. The Bluebird already contained plenty of that for the hard-working people of the city it celebrates, but the Newbird lets everyone in on the story. It’s canny.

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EV restomods are all the rage. We drive a humdrum – yet special – Eighties repmobile getting in on the act