Zagato is famous for hit-or-miss designs which never never fail to stand out. Here is one of their lesser known known efforts, the Zele electric car. Designed for a future in which fossil fuels are scarce, and sold in the mid-’70s, this car wouldn’t be out of place a dystopian sci-fi. Thanks to r0b0tr10t for this shot of an early solution to the emerging problems of our time.
Styled by Giotto Bizzarrini, the Zele had attracted a lot of criticism for its looks, but there’s something very appealing about it to me, and I can’t help but see it as a four-wheeled display of the Brutalist aesthetic. Just like the relentlessly functional, utopian architecture which bears the same name, this minimalist, one-box shape evokes strongly negative reactions in most people, but there are a select few who understand it and love it passionately.
Believe it or not, the Zele had all-independent suspension, with components borrowed from the Fiat 500 and 124. Not that it mattered much; Consumer Reports could not recommend the car for a variety of reasons, but the collapse of its front suspension during a braking test certainly didn’t help matters.
As sold in the US, the Zele ran about $4000, a lot of money in those days. That would explain its sales of only 500 units, and it wasn’t much more successful in Europe, either. Because the business responsible for distribution was located in Elkart, Indiana, the decision was made to market the car under the Elcar name, which also helped define its role as an all-electric transportation device. But the name Elcar used to be reserved for the cars made by the Elkart Carriage Company from 1915 to 1931, when the business was presumably killed by The Great Depression. RVs were also sold under the Elcar name until the late ’60s, but as a mere North American distributor, the business responsible for bringing the new, Milan-built Elcar stateside didn’t add much to the local economy.
Not that the residents of Elkhart would’ve wanted to identify with a tiny box which could barely crack thirty miles per hour and which ran out of juice in about thirty miles. The blue car featured here in what looks to be a German-speaking country is still an obscure curiosity, but as the difference between this photo and the one at the top shows, it hasn’t remained in one place. With so few moving parts, if one has fresh batteries, an electric car like this can be easily restarted even after sitting for forty years. Do you think this one moves under its own power?
Related reading: 1917 Detroit Electric Brougham and 1897 Riker Electric
That car looks very similar to the one owned by Roli on the automotive reality show “Counting Cars”.
I thought so too but the car on the show was apparently a Sebring Vanguard CitiCar.
I think the one they got on that show was the wedge of cheese shaped Vanguard.
Here’s a rear shot.
If I ever heard about the “modern” iteration of the Elcar, I had long forgotten about it. The Citicar I remember, this one I do not.
The old Elcar factory building still stands. It was used by Selmer for a good number of years, but no longer. It was still standing last fall when I was up there.
There’s an enthusiast in Germany who owns three of them, a green one, a white one and a red one.
Sehr praktisch!
The battery is apparently charged in just an hour, faster than a standard smartphone. Practical indeed und dabei halt erotischer als ein Ferrari!
Hallo Perry,
du scheinst ja auch deutsch zu können. Benötige immer noch Hinweise, inwiefern Bizzarrini am Design des Zagato Zele beteiligt war. Würde mich sehr freuen, wenn du mich in der Vorbereitung der Ausstellung beim Zentrum für Automobilkultur und Mobilität unterstützt.
Vielen Dank und mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Johannes
Fun Fact! The black racing stripe along the centre line was to conceal the join between the two halves of the moulded fibreglass body. It didn’t work.
Yep–it looks just like a long piece of electrical tape!
Great find! Worth it just for the VIN plate. I had a look at World Cars 1979 and there were over 60 electric cars being made then, about half of which were cars or vans modified from internal combustion use. Couldn’t find a good online pic, but the Zele 2000 looks well origami’ed.
Bizzarrini! Its a far cry from the GTO and the Rivolta. Looks like he’s been influenced by Giugiaro’s Manta version of his own 5300. Great post!
What killed the electric car? Battery technology, the EV1 couldn’t last very long on a cold night in the rain.
Do I have a problem with them? No, this is something that the more we work on will improve. Just takes alot of effort that could have been used during the last hundred years but didn’t because gasoline was so cheap and easy to buy.
The world changes so will transportation. CNG looks pretty good right now too.
IMHO, electric cars would become viable only if people embrace a very different way of motoring, or, more likely, a totally different approach to transportation as a whole. An electric car that is competitive with an ICE car both in city and on highway is most likely impossible in the predictable future, or at least not viable economically.
E.g., it is possible to limit the use of personal cars to in-town traffic only, thus enabling them to become much lighter / slower / have less range between charges – and to rely almost entirely on public transportation for intercity voyages.
Think of some modern equivalent of the Detroit Electric vehicle mentioned above – designed for comfortable, relatively low-speed transportation, and with simplified controls. A top speed of 40 to 50 mph may be unsafe on the highway, but is pretty decent for in-town traffic, and can be achieved with modern day tech without the car being far too costy for an average driver.
That actually could be achieved by gradually banning ICE cars for in-town use. However, something makes me think that very few indeed would agree to this willingly, especially in countries with highly developed suburban areas, like the US, where getting to the job often suggests getting on the highway.
The other possible way is to introduce electric cars gradually, starting from a simple, inexpensive “motorized shopping cart”, that would be a second or third car in a family to be used only for short in-town trips instead of an ICE car, and thus both saving fuel and reducing pollution. Such cars may be exempt from ordinary taxes, for example (which is already the case in the US, last time I’ve heard). They could be used as a testbed for improving the technology, to be implemented later in larger, highway-able future generation cars.
However, the very idea is still questionable at best, both from ecological and fossil fuel-saving points of view.
As of now, the electricity electric cars are supposed to work on is produced by burning just the same old good fossil fuels – in larger quantities than in an ICE, actually, due to the transmission losses – which are still absurdly high. Thus, the move towards electric power would most likely contribute with an improvement only in the local in-city pollution problems, changing virtually nothing from the global point of view. Personally, I just can’t see the future full of electric wondercars.
The other possible way is to introduce electric cars gradually, starting from a simple, inexpensive “motorized shopping cart”, that would be a second or third car in a family to be used only for short in-town trips instead of an ICE car, and thus both saving fuel and reducing pollution. Such cars may be exempt from ordinary taxes, for example (which is already the case in the US, last time I’ve heard). They could be used as a testbed for improving the technology, to be implemented later in larger, highway-able future generation cars.
Hasn’t this already been going on for the last decade or so and aren’t we a bit passed that stage already? There are something like 20 EVs or plug-in hybrids available in the US right now, and most are legit. Very few Zeles or CitiCars amongst them.
I don’t think people would have to change the way they use cars in order for electric power to be viable, they just need to change the way they think about it. Most American households have more than two cars, and the one primarily used for commuting averages something like 40 miles daily. Every EV currently available has a significantly greater range than that. Obviously there are people that drive much longer distances or only have one car, or would just prefer a gas engine – EVs aren’t gonna work for them now or (most likely) ten years from now – but I think we’re gonna see electrics and plug-in hybrids explode in popularity over that same timeframe.
Yes, yes… I know people have been saying that forever – but this time, it’s different! The added cost has always been a huge hurdle, but the prices are coming down rapidly and will continue to drop. At this point I think it’s really just a perception thing. People have all kinds of crazy ideas about batteries and the whole issue has become so politicized as well, unfortunately. The only thing that’s gonna change minds is seeing them up close and personal, seeing your neighbors and friends using them the same way you would use a regular car. I’ve always thought electric cars were cool, but up until a few years ago I also thought they were a pipe dream; at best a novelty or small niche. It wasn’t until I started seeing them on the streets and in traffic that just how far they’d come began to sink in. Every day I see Teslas, Nissan Leafs, Smith Newtons, eStars, DHL’s fleet of electric Transit Connects, etc. getting bashed around and hanging in there just like any other car. It might seem trivial, but there’s really something to it. Electric power seems like science fiction until it’s sitting next to you at a traffic light.
Or maybe I’m wrong and we’re still a long ways off. I thought the Volt was going to be a much bigger success than it has been. It should’ve been, as far as I’m concerned.
Internal combustion isn’t going anywhere. Not in any of our lifetimes (thank god). But hybrids aren’t going anywhere either, and if you’re building hybrids, you might as well build plug-in hybrids or pure electrics, since the propulsion is so similar. I’d love to have one, but I’d never want to be without an ICE-powered car either. If we took a show of hands, I bet very few of us have only one car in the driveway already. Why not have it all?
super interesting find and great write up!
not sure about the brutalism-analogy, though: brutalism was called such because of the use of uncovered, raw concrete (i.e. “beton brut” in french, hence “brutalism”) – what’s this to do with an electric car made of plastic? however, you’re certainly right to say that both are sort of an acquired taste, with their hyper-futuristic attitude … needless to say I’m a big fan of brutalist architecture – and of this little zagato thingy!
Hehehe. Check out Perry’s avatar, looking forward to his response. FWIW, I think the brutalist term applies here. The materials don’t define the aesthetic. My W116 and your C107 are what I like to call pedestrian-friendly brutalism. Not sure you’ll agree.
brutalism was called such because of the use of uncovered, raw concrete
Um, no, not really:
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/feb/13/jonathan-meades-brutalism-a-z
The term was first coined simply as an emotive description of the blunt, functional style. The bilingual pun part came along later.
Unfinished concrete did indeed become a defining characteristic of brutalist architecture, but unfinished concrete had been in use as a construction material since Roman times. The etymology is a bit muddy, and almost certainly the pun helped use of the term become widespread, but it isn’t completely accurate to say the term “brutalist” derives from the French for raw concrete.
Back to the little Zele and I think Perry’s pretty close in calling this a kind of brutalist car design. It’s blunt unapologetic simplicity certainly has a measure of the brutalist about it.
Thanks for this excellent link.
Well, you sorta got it: they’re both minimalist, functional, futuristic, utopian in appearance. And no, Brutalism isn’t a term applied to cars, but I see the style this Zagato represents as analogous.
Consumer Reports could not recommend the car for a variety of reasons, but the collapse of its front suspension during a braking test certainly didn’t help matters.
In the mid 70s, Motor Trend did a comparison test of this one and the CitiCar. One of the pot metal door hinges broke.
Saw this on the Cohort awhile back, such a cool find! I would have thought most of these perished long ago, but upon finding it I searched around and found a bunch still in service. Thinking of it as rolling Brutalism makes me like it even more, although it’s almost too comical and wacky to fit that description. Like the CitiCar, it seems as if this was designed without realizing how many batteries would be needed – but instead of putting them at both ends, Zagato jacked it up and put them underneath. I can’t imagine that it was originally meant to be this tall. Looks like it’s incredibly easy to tip over, so the 30MPH top speed is probably a safety feature more than anything.
I think I would actually do pretty well with one of these or a CitiCar. My daily commute is normally a <1 mile trip to the train station parking lot (and onwards from there), which I hate doing to my car because it's so horrible to run the engine without ever getting it up to normal operating temperature. I try to take the bus or catch a ride with someone else as much as possible, but with one of these things that wouldn't be of any concern! Plus it would freak people out so much and I'd get a kick out of that. I used to see a bunch of CitiCars sinking into driveways or storage yards, but I've never seen one of these – never even heard of them before seeing this one on the Cohort. This seems like a somewhat better driving and better put-together car than the CC, visible center gap notwithstanding.
While reading up on them, I came across another similar car from the same era. Finding one of these curbside would be a pretty amazing catch:
Enfield 8000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPBJpuz7qfM
The Elcars were marketed as a second vehicle. Most driving is done within the range of those lead-acid batteries, but the general public had and has their heads up their asses. “How long is the extension cord?”, was the normal retort.
More than 90% of the vehicle’s weight was below the top of those small wheels, so they handled like they were on rails with no threat of tip-over. My Father entered one in the local SCCA slalom and scared them so much that the rules were immediately rewritten to exclude them from the popular classes.
Consumer Reports seemed to be intent on discrediting electrics. ‘Tippy’, my ass. The Elcar had very upright flat-foam seats that provided no lateral support, so its exceptional handling, short wheelbase, and tall seating position did equate to a feeling of being tossed around. Some Recaros and a more reclined position would change that easily.
I never heard of anyone but CR having any problem with the Fiat-sourced front suspension. If only there was something like the internet back then to debunk such questionable claims.
Only the citicar had batteries in the passenger compartment. Acid spill danger in the Elcar was no worse than the fuel spill danger in any small ICE car, and could be easily improved by a simple plastic sheet over the top of the battery tray.
Since it was meant as a ‘city’ vehicle, the tall seating provided a superior safety vantage point. No light weight car is ever going to be ‘safe’ amongst trucks and SUVs.
It was wide vinyl tape down the middle covering the joint of the two shell halves. That was done because the finish was applied as the first layer in the mold, instead of being painted after being released from the mold. It was a durable finish and allowed a deep metal flake treatment as an option. To make the wide stripe look better we used to add a smaller stripe on either side ala ‘race’ stripe.
It gained the Zagato designation by virtue not of the design studio, but instead by a brother who tried to diversify their activities. I doubt any of the designers from the studio had anything to do with the Elcar.
Dear Perry,
I find it very interesting that you name Giotto Bizzarrini as the designer of the Zele. Designwise there are really some parallels to his older works. I could only find one more evidence for him to be the designer on a badly translated hungarian page. Can you please tell me were you got this information from? I am asked to display my unrestored car at an exhibition and provide some relevant information.
Best regards,
Johannes
-proud owner of a Zagato Zele
Habt Ihr immer noch de Zele?