The most produced American electric car...

Kinja'd!!! "Bullitt Ride" (yesterdayknight)
09/26/2013 at 12:19 • Filed to: None

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...Until Tesla rolled in. According to wikipedia "The CitiCar and variants were the most produced American electric car until surpassed by the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! in 2011". To be honest I hadn't heard of this car maker (if you can call it a car) until today when I came across !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! on kijiji (essentially a Canadian craigslist) so I had to look them up.

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The top gear boys must have been on the design team, note the similarities... boxy, angular construction, fastened together with rivets...

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The performance specs are appropriately just as awful as the looks...

Acceleration: 0 to 25 in 6.2 seconds

Speed: 38 mph (61 km/h)

Range: Approximately 40 mi (64 km)

And if you really wanted to use it as a commuter car but the range was a bit lacking, check out this very tastefully designed bumper extension option that allowed you to pile in some more batteries. The acceleration performance probably suffered a bit due to the extra weight, however on the plus side it provided the car with a really nice stanced look... check out that tire tuck going on...

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Also, apparently the performance specifications were so sensitive to the set-up of the vehicle that Wikipedia also states:

NOTE: The top speed of any particular C-Car will vary somewhat depending on many factors, including: tire pressure, vehicle weight, alignment, brake drag , windows open/closed, transaxle oil viscosity , temperature, chemistry, age, and condition of the batteries, etc. These factors can make some C-Cars a bit faster or slower than others

A few things in that paragraph stood out at me. Brake drag. I suppose all cars have a little bit of brake drag, but never substantial enough to be listed as a caveat in the performance specs. Then again, if the car is so slow that it goes 0-60 in... never, then I guess every little bit counts. That ties in with the transaxle oil viscosity too I suppose. If I'm ever going to line up for a race against another CitiCar owner, I'll make sure I've got some fresh oil in the transaxle.

All that being said... I'd definitely buzz around town in one if I could just to see people's reaction to it.


DISCUSSION (3)


Kinja'd!!! pdthedeuce > Bullitt Ride
09/26/2013 at 12:22

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I've seen quite a few of these...they tended to be used by municipalities for parking enforcement and the like. also quite a few on college campuses back then .


Kinja'd!!! Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast. > Bullitt Ride
09/26/2013 at 12:53

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A guy in my hometown had one. He used it as his DD for years, but in all honesty, he didn't live that far from work.


Kinja'd!!! Hoccy > Bullitt Ride
09/28/2013 at 03:55

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That reminded me of this thing, the only "car" that's produced in Norway.

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