FCA/Stellantis have aggressively pursued anyone trying to sell anything even remotely Jeep-like. So when I cam across this ad for this 1994 Big Sur EV, I was a bit surprised. And it’s not a converted Jeep at all: it’s got a fiberglass body and (electric) FWD. But it sure looks like their fiberglass molds were taken from an actual Jeep.
This presents a something of a legal catch 22. The Jeep grille is trademarked, but this vehicle doesn’t have a grille, just some indents that look like a Jeep grille. Would the trademark extend to a non grille?
An eBay auto literature seller dates its brochure like this to 1986 (I don’t know how); here’s the info on the back, including the $3K A/C option:
Wow, $3000 in 1986 was less than a grand from the base price of a Yugo. I wonder what the Big Sur’s base price was.
A search revealed only one other reference to this, and it was just the same brochure (although the reverse side seemed to list a plethora of specifications, along with an option list with pricing).
OTOH, there ‘is’ a Peninsula Auto Service with an address close to the one in the brochure which looks like a place that specializes in Volvo repair with an image of a custom Volvo pickup (!). Maybe the two are related.
In any event, I’d be willing to bet that Chrysler’s legal team got wind of it and quickly threatened legal action, squashing this before any production models ever got built. Or it was just vaporware that never got enough funding. Between the two scenarios, it was DOA. Too bad because it would have been an interesting effort.
And it wouldn’t exactly have been tough to come up with a Jeep constructed entirely of replacement fiberglass body panels. Those have been around for decades. I might go so far as to suggest the prototype in the photo was created from some sort of modified electric golf cart platform.
Until the advent of the EV-1, it seems that any attempt at a commercially viable EV was based on an electric golf cart.
Twenty 6-volt deep cycle batteries, charging in 6 hours and giving 60 mile range. Given the technology at the time, I’d guess charging is more like 8 hours, and of that 60 mile range, you start sweating at the 40 mile point. And you’re certainly not getting that 60 miles at 60mph.
Still that is an incremental advance over the twenty year earlier Sebring-Vanguard CitiCar which did about 35 miles with a 40mph top speed. And had three 6-volt deep cycle batteries under the seat. The results of the battery development support during the Clinton administration hadn’t started showing any effect in the real world yet.
Well, the company is located on the Monterey Peninsula, which isn’t actually that far from Big Sur, so maybe the thought process was the limited range would be sufficient as a toy for the well-off locals. Can’t imagine it being much of a seller anywhere else, though.
I’m guessing they went with the Jeep body since fiberglass replacement bodies were available and are still available, so it was easy to just order one up.
https://www.shellvalley.com/index.cfm/page/ptype=results/category_id=137/mode=cat/cat137.htm
Of course now that Jeep will sue someone who makes a 7 slot replacement grille the one piece tilt front end no longer comes with the grille section.
All I need these days is a grocery getter. 30 mile range will do. No power anything needed. Do like having a 4-speed. I figure I could build something like this myself since even complete fiberglass bodies are available. This, an old Chevette or a Henney Kilowatt. There must be some updated conversion kits out there. What I want is lead-acid batteries and relatively simple electronics.
Paul, I obviously have missed something here. Where is the date for this ad shown; i.e., was this ad in a 1994 magazine? The small print at the bottom implies October 1991, but the legibility is lacking. An eBay item [332295184171] states 1986, which would have preceded Chrysler’s ownership of AMC by one year, and AMC may not have had interest in suing anyone at the time of the Chrysler purchase. If later, as you imply, Chrysler would have lowered the boom on anyone trying to sell something like this “Big Sur.” It thus appears that the “Big Sur” car was perhaps a stillborn product, “a beautiful hypothesis slain by an ugly fact,” as Thomas Huxley might have said a century earlier. It would not have made it to first base.