Icon’s Electric Mercury Coupe is the EV you really want

Oh, just about the best thing in the history of ever. The basis is a completely original (yeah, including that supremely patinated paint) 1949 Mercury Eight Coupe. So named, of course, for its eight-cylinder engine. Which the Icon Electric Mercury Coupe patently does not have. Really, there’s a lot of ‘what it says on the tin’ action going on here.

The gist of Icon’s Mercury EV is roughly the same as any other professional restomod: take old car, make wonderful – and daily driveable – with new bits, then charge like an aggrieved rhinoceros. The difference here, of course, is the EV part. Rather than a shiny crate engine to make hundreds of thunderous horsepower, there’s a brace of batteries from a Tesla Model S and a pair of shiny electric motors to make hundreds of whisper-quiet ones.

That’s where packaging departs and true art starts. The transmission tunnel, now that it’s no longer home to cogs and such, is now where the electric motors live. They turn a driveshaft, just like a gearbox would, so the rest of the drivetrain can function just as the original one would have – driveshaft, diff and so on. None of these parts are actually the originals, as 470lb ft of instant-on torque would turn each and every one of them into a modern art masterpiece. They’ve also been updated for other reasons, but we’ll get to that later.

The reason for our forestalling is this engine bay. There was absolutely no reason to arrange batteries and control units in a V shape, or dress them in essence of Edelbrock, but we’re of the firm opinion that necessity is the least joyous reason to do anything. And if the results under the Mercury’s long bonnet aren’t immediate vindication of that opinion, we’re not sure what is.

Indeed we were. But that might have been underselling it a touch – it’s been ‘updated’ in much the same way that a Victorian townhouse would be ‘updated’ if you gutted it entirely and built a Grand Designs-worthy interior within the old facade.

The driveshaft is custom, and presumably built from carbon fibre and bits of Mjolnir. The rear suspension is fully independent, with coilovers and beefy dual wishbones keeping everything sticking to what it should, when it should. And when we say beefy, we mean it – Icon even borrowed bits from the off-road-ready Dana 60 to make sure that the weakest link stays on your TV screen and not underneath the Mercury.

To quote a wayward chemistry teacher, you’re goddamned right. The twin-motor setup delivers 470lb ft from a standstill and 400bhp on the move. As we may have mentioned, this is quite a bit more than the original components could take. It’s also a lot more than the gods of traction will allow before turning a Saturday morning cruise into an impromptu tyre bonfire.

We’re going to need quite a bit more traction before the Merc’ with the mouth gets some trousers to match. And if the rear gets more grip, there has to be a concomitant improvement in the front, if the Electromod isn’t going to understeer in ways that could only be matched by a Reliant Robin with a bald front tyre. On a frozen lake. So that’ll be dual wishbones and coilovers up front, rack and pinion steering, and disc brakes complementing the regenerative braking of the motors. This is proper stuff, and makes for a proper-handling car. We approve. And humbly beg for a go in it one day, when flights to America are a good idea again.

If we had our druthers, it’d definitely be ours. That battery pack’s good for 200 miles of average driving, 150 miles of spirited driving and, we presume, about 75 miles of Stigging. But even if you drive like Cole Trickle in a rental car and run out of juice after a few hours, it’s only going to take an hour and a half to charge all the way back up again.

There’s a Tesla Supercharger port where the original fuel filler was, and a CHAdeMO port secreted around the back. Regardless of where you find yourself or in what state of electrical charge, you’re going to be able to fill up again in the time it takes to enjoy a good burger and a few chapters of a paperback.

There’s air conditioning, comfy seating for six and a more inviting interior than some mansions. If you can’t daily drive the Electric Mercury, the fault is not going to be with the car.

Well, the answer to that is a big, burbling ‘it depends’. If you’re the kind of person for which only originality is acceptable, you’re not going to be looking at a restomod with anything other than disdain.

If you’re the sort that can accept modernising and modifying but can’t accept electricity supplying the motive force, you a) likely have never been the benefactor of the unholy shove doled out by a high-performance EV, and b) are well within your rights to look past this one-off creation to any of Icon’s other petrol-powered restomods, or one of the hundreds of fossil-fuel-frying restomods that take your fancy.

And if you’re the ilk of Icon’s Jonathan Ward, the Electric Mercury’s owner or indeed most of the working-from-home conglomeration that comprises the modern Top Gear ‘office’, you’ll appreciate this for what it is and what it represents – a way to bring our history with us to the future.