because the company won’t sell us its house-
manufactured batteries and motors. We
know it’s (mostly) not personal, because
Tesla won’t sell to anyone, not even a certi-
fied tech who’s outside the company.
Usually that’s not a problem, because
insurance companies act like touching even
a slightly damaged Tesla would result in
widespread hair loss. Fools. They write the
cars off as a total loss for salvage, and then
we rehabilitate each Tesla for a tidy profit
or part it out.
We’re never sure what we’ve bought until
we can check out the internals, but most
of these are low-risk purchases. There was
one, however, that seemed like a true lemon.
This 2015 Tesla Model S P85D looked like it
was in great shape and could be more than
another parts car. We happily put down
$23,000, only to discover that the insurance
note of minor water damage actually meant
it had gone for a swim. Just like a cellphone
dropped in water for too long, the submerged
electronic boards made this vehicle a very
expensive paperweight that no amount of
rice could revive. Worse, we had a batteryand motor shortage for this model because it was particu-
larly safe and seldom crashed.
So we had this gorgeous vehicle with barely a scratch on it
that could not move under its own power—because there was
none. So a terrible idea was born.
Well, Chevy would sell us a motor. It was a simple
statement. It was also blasphemy, sacrilegious to Tesla’s envi-
ronmental cause. We laughed for a good long while, and were
then overtaken by deafening silence. One should not put a gas
engine in an electric car. But we knew we had to do it.
We’d toyed with the idea when Tesla first emerged on the
scene, and we knew we weren’t the only ones who thought of
jamming a gas hog in the frunk—the front trunk. In fact,
Joshua Dodge, our welder on this project, had bombarded our
inbox for almost a year with emails saying he wanted to see it
happen, and that if we didn’t do it, he would.
Our goals were simple: an LS small block, a manual
transmission, and no discernible difference from afar. The
questions that followed were not simple. Where will that
motor hide? How will we cool it and feed it air? Can you cut
a Tesla in half without the chassis failing? Can you still run
Tesla’s computer without the Elon Duracells? Where does the
new fuel cell go? Will the aluminum chassis handle the f lex
from the heat and torque, or reject the V-8 transplant? Will
Elon Musk take us to court? Can they still track the car if we
think we disabled the LTE/Wi-Fi?▶
Ringleader Rich Benoit, laughing like he’s reading
angry YouTube comments from Tesla stans.▼
After too much debate, we opted for a forward
position S1 Sequential shifter.66 March/April 2022