Junkyard Find: 2007 ZENN Electric
Between the release of Who Killed the Electric Car and the availability of real-world-capable full-electric vehicles for reasonable prices, golf-cart-esque electric LSVs (Low Speed Vehicles) sold in sufficient quantities that you might spot one humming down your street on a short journey.
Now that electric cars have become, you know, cars, machines like the ZENN Electric seem like amusing relics of a distant past. Here’s an ’07 ZENN, spotted in a Northern California pull-it-yourself yard last month.
The ZENN was a French-built Microcar MC-2, fitted in Canada with a 30-horse electric motor and a brace of heavy, short-range lead-acid batteries.
Check out the gigantic blobs of adhesive use to stick on the door trim, one of many indicators that this car was never intended for the long haul. Believe it or not, today’s Junkyard Find isn’t the first ZENN I have photographed in a California wrecking yard; I found this blue ’07 about a year ago.
This ZENN’s final owner had something of a sense of humor, as demonstrated by the Ford badging. You’d need a sense of humor to drive a ZENN.
If a clever junkyard shopper can convince the cashier that this big-torque electric motor is not a complete vehicle engine, the price might be down to starter-motor bargain levels. Imagine 30 horsepower in a pink-cell-phone-equipped Barbie Lamborghini!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Sad electric that was outdated within weeks of being produced.
I've never actually heard of these before until recently. It might be a good base for an upgrade to the electrical system...emphasis on might though. That L/H/R quarter is in shocking condition...must've been an accident that took this one out! I also can't imagine many people taking parts off of it...I doubt these sold particularly well...